George Brandis met with a regional jazz festival after being lobbied by former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella prompting accusations of using his arts portfolio to bolster her campaign to win back the seat of Indi.
The National Association for the Visual Arts (Nava) have questioned why Brandis met organisers of a jazz music festival in a meeting arranged by Mirabella, despite declining several other meeting requests with small-to-medium arts organisation delegates.
Mirabella brokered the 25-minute meeting between Brandis and the chairman of the Wangaratta Jazz festival, Paul Squires, at parliament house on 12 August after the festival expressed concerns its future federal funding was in jeopardy.
Nava point to the meeting as evidence Australia’s peer-reviewed arts funding model has been potentially compromised, this time caught up in the government’s attempt to win back the north-eastern Victorian Indi seat in which Wangaratta is located, after Mirabella lost it to independent Cathy McGowan by fewer than 500 votes in 2013.
As part of the government’s May budget announcement, Brandis announced $104.7m would be removed from the arm’s-length, peer-reviewed Australia Council over four years to establish a new National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA) that will sit under his control.
Nava executive director Tamara Winikoff told Guardian Australia that Brandis’s meeting with the jazz festival was “an example of how, with the money now under the direct control of the minister, he can use it for political purposes.
“This is exactly what we’ve been pointing to as the danger of the minister having his own fund rather than the principle of arts funding being done through an arm’s-length process.”
The association held a protest outside the prime minister’s Wentworth electoral office on Wednesday, calling on Malcolm Turnbull to take over the arts portfolio from Brandis.
Several arts companies told Guardian Australia off the record that the Australia Council had told them up to 30% of the arts organisations the council funds are likely to lose key or operational funding from next year.
On 18 June Brandis refused to meet or send representatives to a group of 65 small-to-medium arts organisation delegates and independent artists from around Australia who had travelled to Canberra hoping to discuss the arts funding changes with political party representatives.
He did, however, meet representatives of Australia’s 28 major performing arts companies, which have been quarantined from the budget cuts, that month. These 28 companies will also be eligible to apply for additional funding through NPEA. Individual artists will not be eligible to apply.
Brandis’s office did not respond to repeated requests by Guardian Australia for comment regarding his meeting with Wangaratta jazz festival. Mirabella told Guardian Australia via email, “I was approached by the Jazz festival to help them with their issues of concern and I endeavoured to do so.”
In a statement issued by the festival, Squires said Brandis indicated in their meeting that NPEA guidelines “were currently being revised and that there would be greater recognition and capacity for rural and regional projects, which included the potential to quarantine funds for regional areas.”
He was also informed of proposals to double the funding available to festivals within the budget pool.
Squires told Guardian Australia he took the opportunity to speak to Brandis not merely on the festival’s behalf but for “all of rural and regional Australia, and all of the jazz sector,” including Melbourne and Stonnington jazz festivals.
However, the general manager of the Melbourne International Jazz festival, Jennifer Kerr, said Squires “doesn’t have any mandate to speak on behalf of Melbourne or Stonnington” but they “support any effort to raise awareness of the jazz sector”.
McGowan told Guardian Australia, “In rural and regional Australia, when people are treated differently, it causes great loss of faith in government. It looks like Wangaratta jazz festival was treated differently from everybody else.”
The creative director of Deniliquin’s Outback Theatre for Young People, Sarah Parsons, said she found it “quite funny” that the festival was speaking on behalf of regional and rural arts organisations. “We’d consider them to be a bit of a city [organisation].”
She said 2016 is set to be a “scary year” for the 13 youth arts organisations that will no longer receive dedicated funding for youth programs. Her theatre is among those to lose their core funding on 31 December. They are now applying for four-year Australia Council funding and must compete with adult group applicants.
“Youth theatre needs to have a voice in this because it’s the breeding ground for artists and audiences of tomorrow,” Parsons said.
The funding changes have meant Australia Council lost 28% of its discretionary spending, customarily allocated to small-to-medium artists.
A Senate inquiry into federal arts funding cuts in the 2014 and 2015 budgets is due to report to parliament on 26 November, with a round of public hearings around the country due to finish on 29 October.
In their inquiry submission Nava accused Brandis, along with Queensland government senator and chair of the legal and constitutional affairs legislation committee Ian MacDonald, of a “combined interrogation” and “shameless political intimidation” of Australia Council chief executive Tony Grybowksi in a Senate estimates meeting on 20 November.
The submission states the pair pressured Australia Council to resume funding of the Townsville chamber music festival when Grybowski confirmed to Senate estimates on 20 November that the chamber music festival’s application had been unsuccessful in the Australia Council’s May funding round in 2014.
MacDonald put the Australia Council “on notice” to answer why it had ceased funding the festival and told Grybowski he would “probably be hung, drawn and quartered” if he turned up at the event.
“I cannot ask you to prejudge applications, but you are saying that you feel fairly confident that you can give a solid indication to the festival that they will be considered in the February grants?” he asked.
Brandis said that “as a Queensland senator and as somebody who has taken a close interest in Townsville chamber music festival” he had made it “very clear” to the Australia Council that it was the government’s wish and his wish as the minister that the festival continue to be supported.
He admitted that under the Australia Council Act, the government and minister cannot give direction to the council in relation to any particular funding proposal. “But let me take the opportunity of this forum to make it very clear that it is the government’s very strong wish that the funding application be approved,” he said.
Grybowski said the council was working with the festival to ensure its 2015 application was successful. The festival was approved for funding in February. In the aftermath of the prime ministerial leadership spill, Brandis told ABC’s Leigh Sales he voted for Malcolm Turnbull, and would like to remain as Attorney-General. He was not asked about whether he would like to retain the arts portfolio.
