h/t Tim Andews, so much shit happening in Canberra that this waste of money almost got under the radar.
Creative Australia, the new national cultural policy, will create jobs and encourage a new generation of artists and creative industry business with sweeping reforms to Australian Government support for the arts, cultural heritage and creative industries.
Arts Minister Simon Crean today launched Creative Australia, a $235 million vision and strategy to place arts and culture at the centre of modern Australian life.
“Creative Australia is about creating excellence, creating jobs, creating prosperity, creating opportunity and creating unique Australian stories—all vital to an outward looking, competitive and confident nation,” Mr Crean said.
“I’ve long held a passion for the arts. It’s not just the enjoyment they bring, I see the artist as central to us a nation and to securing its future.
“Creative Australia, the first national cultural policy for nearly 20 years, recognises that we must update our strategies because of the major changes sweeping through the cultural sector with digital communication and because more and more Australians are actively participating in cultural activities.
“The cultural sector—the arts, cultural heritage and the creative industries—must have the skills, resources, and resilience to play an active role in Australia’s future.
So what was the spinoff from that Festival of Creative Ideas that Kevin floated in Canberra a few years ago?
FFS aren’t there enough taxpayer funded ‘stories’ out there already about disabled muslim aboriginal junkie finger painters living in Newtown?
I canna take any more, I tells ya!
Rabz
14 Mar 13 at 8:47 am
“I’ve long held a passion for the arts. It’s not just the enjoyment they bring, I see the artist as central to us a nation and to securing its future.”
Fuck yeah – $235m cash splash, five core goals and 11 pathways for action.
That’ll do it, every time. Future secured.
Dr Faustus
14 Mar 13 at 9:00 am
So let’s treat them like cripples.
wreckage
14 Mar 13 at 9:02 am
I believe it’s only $170 million or so in “new” money and that is over five years. Which is probably why they needed so many core goals and pathways and words.
I am someone who is passionate about the arts – some of them, anyway – and I believe that government money and interference is a malign force.
I think though that I am about the only person in the arts industry who believes that.
ken n
14 Mar 13 at 9:08 am
Yes, let’s build resilience by subsidizing dependence on taxpayer funds. Orwell would be gob-smacked. He thought he was being hyperbolic, but now even his words have been superceded by this idiocy. Crean once led the Liar’s party. The madness is endemic.
Keith
14 Mar 13 at 9:18 am
Cultural activities? What on earth are these?
But excuse me, I just arose.
Louis Hissink
14 Mar 13 at 9:27 am
Makes it easier for the Coalition to find savings!
grumpy
14 Mar 13 at 9:27 am
A lot of cripples work (if not debilitated by some other condition) and endeavour to join in with mainstream society.
Creatives see themselves as the handful of healthy people in a nation of 22.6 million lepers.
Toiling Mass
14 Mar 13 at 9:49 am
Gosh, how on earth did Michaelangelo manage on his measly patronage? How on earth did Leonardo? And Beethoven?
Just think of the good they could have done with a proper government-funded program with annual reporting and key performance indicators, including providing the necessary evidence that their work fosters inclusiveness and diversity.
Leonardo could have specialised in gay sex artwork, and been the Francis Bacon of his day. Michaelangelo would have gone into banking, utterly broken in spirit. And Beethoven would have been forced to make a gimmick of his deafness and apply for even more funding on account of his disability.
Instead of which, they frittered away their talents on things like the Mona Lisa, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, ‘Moses’, ‘David’, and the Pastoral and Choral Symphonies.
What a waste.
Philippa Martyr
14 Mar 13 at 10:17 am
I loved the bit about “the employment they bring”. Really?! If by bring you mean compulsorily acquired tax-payer money then maybe. But heck if we’re just going to take money from people and business and spend it what the better than thou’s deem worthy, then any choosen endevour “brings employment”. I guess the robber barons were employment creating machines.
What is it about the arts that they seem to honestly believe that they are entitled to complusory acquire other peoples money, but at the same time believe that their ill gotten gains are a measure of how good and relevant they are?
BTW I think that if you need 213M to play an active role in Australia’s future, then maybe Australia’s future would be better off without you. In fact maybe you just don’t really have any relevance any more at all if you need so much support just to be in the game.
Luke
14 Mar 13 at 10:36 am
Gold Philippa. Gold!
Luke
14 Mar 13 at 10:38 am
Ken n I’m with you.
I’ve been a professional artist (painter) for the past three years without taking a cent of government money.
Nothing urks me more than the notion of ‘government approved artist’.
Filbert
14 Mar 13 at 10:46 am
Crean deserves some credit for identifying $235 million in savings to be realised by an incoming Abbott govt.
Steve of Ferny Hills
14 Mar 13 at 11:03 am
Libs are no better on this.
Pedro
14 Mar 13 at 2:32 pm
All hands on deck to crank up the money pump!
Comrades, to the dress circle!
Quick , time is limited , let’s get stuck in now before it all goes….
“Performing arts was the big winner in terms of funding, with Victorian beneficiaries including the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, in Albury-Wodonga, the Australian Ballet School and Malthouse Theatre, in Southbank, and the Port Melbourne-based Circus Oz and the National Institute of Circus Arts, in Prahran”
Apparently visual arts weren’t favoured with such a spray.
“However, much of that funding would be dependent on the Labor government retaining power.”
OK so it’s actually a farce!
John Cowperthwaite
14 Mar 13 at 2:34 pm
Any money these mendicants receive from the public for their “shows” and “teaching” fess should be returned to the government to off-set the taxpayer funds.
Gab
14 Mar 13 at 2:38 pm
Filbert ,youre nuts! Put Both hands out begging! Be a “good”soshalist Art Bludger!
Borisgodunov
14 Mar 13 at 2:43 pm
Cultural activities? What on earth are these?
Yoghurt juggling. Downhill cheese chasies. Knitting with sauerkraut.
TimT
14 Mar 13 at 3:11 pm
Crean is a sucker for the Paul Keating Government-style gimmick. Where the Keating Government came up with BUY AUSTRALIAN he came up with BRAND AUSTRALIA. Keating comes up with CREATIVE NATION. Crean delivers CREATIVE AUSTRALIA. Oh, and the boring-as-batshit NATIONAL CULTURAL POLICY.
TimT
14 Mar 13 at 3:14 pm
What the f*ck?
Rabz
14 Mar 13 at 3:15 pm
What a missed opportunity for an appearance – indeed an entire launch – by Sir Les Patterson. He’d have done us proud.
Philippa Martyr
14 Mar 13 at 5:33 pm
Otherwise known as the Federal ALP.
H B Bear
14 Mar 13 at 5:42 pm
Fuck me, we are mad to pay for this shite, the only art most of these wankers do is “draw” the dole.I am getting close to white hot fucking rage.
gnasher
14 Mar 13 at 7:49 pm
This is a little tangential but indicative of the thinking at work when working with other people’s money……
Went to a Landcare meeting this week , the aim was to introduce landowners to the “plans” for revegetation each had for their property.
Several interesting points emerged-
The Catchment Management Authority representative who manages this funding locally stated – we need 79- 100 % survival of trees so we can count them as C gains in the international protocols.
Bizarre – survival rates are usually quite low- 30% is a great result.
However as their is no contingency funding available for replacement trees the 79% will be used!
This must pass as magic so at least it is slightly related to arts funding.
Second revealing comment- in this CMA person’s experience and backed up by one other’s tale of losing 3000 tube stock trees in a recent flood- there isn’t any point having plantings!! Better they said to just fence off the area and let nature sort things out.
So why not let those above know this?
Well to start with there is a billion dollars in the Greening Australia Fund and all those plantings ( guaranteed survival 79%) will be used to claim the fund has been an outstanding success…
Then they paid for food and drinks – thank you to those of you paying tax by the way and off we went to marvel at the intricacies of spending government money.
This is conjuring at it’s most elegant.
Oh and one landholder has positioned themselves as the state’s point of sale for a new recycled plastic star picket ( a fence post) that is being encouraged for use by all plan holders. When the idea of sourcing cheap product for China was made for the fencing materials I was conflicted – as a good libertarian should we spend government funds locally on locally made product or just let the market rip?
The main point raised by those receiving funds was concern that the change of government might impact on these plans and funding – NO NO NO came the stern reply – these contracts are safe once you sign on and the funding can’t be withdrawn.
Despite the fact that the person in charge thinks the whole exercise if pointless and a waste of money the spending must go on….
John Cowperthwaite
15 Mar 13 at 8:22 am
Boris,
I just can’t join in at the trough, as it is I avoid the art crowd as much as possible.
A great deal of my art actually digs at the group think and fascist eco-hive mentality of the hegemonic Left.
But they are too full of their Leftist righteousness to see that I am criticising them.
Honestly, if I had any real guts I’d come out loud and proud as Australia’s (possibly) only conservative professional artist.
But I’d never be invited to show again, and the vitriol would rain down upon me in biblical proportions.
Speaking of which, I’m a practicing Catholic.
But I dare not tell anyone.
It is assumed all artists are fundy atheists and eco loonies.
Filbert
15 Mar 13 at 10:59 am
Filbert, strength to you my friend. I’m not a professional artist – more an amateur arty-farty poet/writer sort. But I reckon it’s the professionals who are less likely to hold bizarre, far-left or far-right views. They have to actually make a quid from their art, after all.
Granted, some artists are able to work the grants system and so may not have a professional bone in their bodies – but that only works for some of the people, some of the time.
TimT
15 Mar 13 at 11:35 am
Are you at all related to ‘Gilbert the Filbert, king of the nuts?’
I wish I was an artist. Sadly I can’t even manage stick figures.
Philippa Martyr
15 Mar 13 at 11:50 am
Plastic Star Pickets? John Cowperthwaite, you must be bloody mad, or at least Culturally Insensitive!
Those Whose Land That Was Stolen From Them have had culturally appropriate steel Star Pickets for countless thousands of generations. The instructions for making these Star Pickets has been passed down as Oral History, which was unfortunately lost when The Eeeviiil White Patriarchy committed a Genocide against the Aboriginal National by giving out arsenic laced tobacco at the site of the final Aboriginal Nations mission to the Moon in Woomera.
Or so I’ve been told…
Winston SMITH
15 Mar 13 at 5:45 pm
‘Gilbert the Filbert, king of the nuts’
Just to be pedantic, it’s ‘knut’, with the k sound pronounced separately, as in ‘k’nut’. You’ll note that the line scans much better when you sound the ‘k’ separately.
It’s late Victorian/Edwardian slang for a wealthy and slightly scatterbrained young man-about-town, a dandy or a popinjay, if you like. I can’t think of contemporary slang or cant word that has a similar meaning.
Des Deskperson
15 Mar 13 at 7:19 pm