The 48-year-old federal government’s arts finance and advisory body will receive a $200m funding boost and a new name in the Labor government’s overhaul of Australia’s arts and culture sectors.
The Arts Council of Australia will be renamed Creative Australia and will take two-thirds of the roughly $300m the Albanian government has promised to put back into arts, entertainment and culture over the next four years.
It comes after more than a decade of stagnation and, in many cases, significant declines in recurring financing — though The $200 million Rise program that the Morrison government committed to avert a wholesale collapse of the industry During Covid-19.
The new national cultural policy, which will be called Revive and is set to be officially launched Monday, was promised by the current arts minister, Tony Burke, ahead of the federal election last May, though there were no pre-election details or dollar figures. .
The policy would create two new entities to cover music and literature, two areas believed to have been disproportionately neglected under the previous government. It will also include measures to bring First Nations work and artists to the fore.
A dedicated new body, Music Australia, will support and invest in the development of contemporary Australian music.
Literature will operate under a new support and investment body, Writers Australia, details of which are expected to be outlined when the policy is launched on Monday. The sector learned Friday that authors will begin receiving lending rights from audio and e-book loans for the first time under Revive, a move expected to boost writers’ earnings by up to 20%.
Labor promises to introduce legislation to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, with a special brief on cracking down on fake art, and to create a new Indigenous-led body that Burke said would give First Nations people autonomy over investments and decisions, including how a new strategy should be developed for the creative workforce.
The $11 million funding will create a political partnership with the Australian government to guide the future direction of First Nations languages. There will be $80 million to build a National Aboriginal Art Gallery in Alice Springs (a project announced in last year’s budget that the Northern Territory government has already committed to), plus an unspecified amount for an Aboriginal cultural center in Perth.
And in motion Burke was first marked in July To address concerns of harassment and discrimination, Primarily in the music industryThe fully government-funded arts sector will be subject to fair pay and workplace safety measures overseen by a newly formed group, the Center for Arts and Leisure Workplaces.
With the aforementioned exceptions, Monday’s announcement on Revive is expected to be light on financial details, with not many granular details expected until the May budget. Australia’s major collection institutions already know they will have to wait another four months to find out their fate, as many have said they have. She has been on a financial knife edge for years.
The screen industry, and in particular the previous government’s commitment to provide an additional $400m over the next four years to attract large overseas film productions to Australia through a location incentive scheme, is also not expected to be part of Monday’s policy announcement.
However, Labor has committed to a timetable for introducing quotas to force broadcasters such as Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Apple TV to spend a minimum percentage on clear Australian content.
The industry has been pushing to force streaming platforms to spend 20% of their Australian revenue on home-made content, but no figure has yet to be revealed. A Labor spokesperson said consultations over the next six months would determine the final percentage, which would be legislated by the end of the year and come into force on 1 July 2024.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the Prime Minister said: Anthony AlbaneseHe said the government’s cultural policy would restore “motive, direction and vision” to a $17 billion industry that employs about 400,000 Australians after a “lost decade” of federal policy drift and financing neglect.
“Today we begin a new chapter in the arts and culture sector in Australia,” he said.
“It builds on the proud legacy of previous Labor governments who recognized the importance of art and culture to Australia’s identity, social unity and economic prosperity.”