The Legal and Constitutional References Committee – Impact of the 2014 and 2015 Commonwealth Budget Decisions on the Arts

Dear Senators,

My name is Jane Longhurst; I am 49 years old and an established, professional actor of twenty-five years standing based in Hobart, Tasmania. Since graduating from Victorian College of the Arts I have performed in some of Australia’s best loved television series (including , GP, Janus, A Country Practice) and have worked with some of our iconic performing arts companies such as HotHouse Theatre and Flying Fruit Fly Circus both based in Albury Wodonga. I have performed Shakespeare outdoors, create original performance work, work as a voice artist and help develop dozens of new Australian plays. In short, I’m a jobbing actor in Australia.

I write to express my outrage and astonishment at the recent appropriation of $104.8 million from the Australia Council budget to establish a new arts funding program to be administered at the discretion of the Minister for the Arts, Senator George Brandis. My outrage is based on the lack of sector consultation that preceded this decision; my astonishment is that yet again, the arts community is being forced to justify its existence and squabble over further depleted funds through the Australia Council.

My letter will address the Terms of Reference: (a) the impact of the 2014-2015 Commonwealth Budget decisions on the arts with particular focus on: (A) the small to medium sector and (B) individual artists.

As reported recently (www.crikey.com.au, 15 June 2015), ‘…the proposed funding cuts to the Australia Council announced in the May budget equate to 28% of the federal arts funding body’s discretionary funding’. Yet the Chair of the Australia Council Rupert Myers was notified of the acquisition of $104.8 million from the Australia Council budget only hours before Treasurer Joe Hockey announced the Commonwealth Budget in May. This raid on the Australia Council’s budget has forced the Council to cancel a number of funding rounds and programs. This results in nil return to the hundreds of hour’s individual artists and arts organisations devote to preparing detailed, credible funding applications. Bad luck for them it would seem.

As has been extensively documented and reported it is the small to medium sub sector of the Australian arts and cultural sphere that will feel the impact of those cuts most severely. And for a state with the population of Tasmania, (500,000), these cuts will be especially deleterious. Nine Tasmanian based arts organisations, some representing decades of sustained practice and national and international acclaim, face an even riskier and uncertain future than normal. The Tasmanian based companies and organisations that have enjoyed sustained support from Australia Council are:

Island Magazine Incorporated

Australian Script Centre

Terrapin Puppet Theatre Ltd

Tasdance Ltd

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Big hART Inc.

Contemporary Art Tasmania

Design Tasmania Limited

Kickstart Arts Inc

Performing Lines Limited (supporting Tasmania Performs)

The presence of these companies in Tasmania ensures freelance artists such as myself can actually eke out a living. Putting to one side the data rich evidence that exists confirming that arts organisations such as these enrich our communities, reflect our stories and lead social cohesion, companies such as these act as great drawcards for talent outside our island state to come, live and work here and be inspired by Tasmania’s natural beauty and resident artists as we are by them.

As theatre scholar and director Julian Meyrick observed recently in The Conversation, ‘Small companies are the pivot screw holding the art form together in this country. Historically they are the drivers of growth, philosophically the keeper of core values’. (https://theconversation.com/we-have-a-show-tunes-government-with-an-arts-policy-to-match-44176)

Should the future of these small to medium companies be made any less secure their long term viability within Tasmania’s cultural milieu will surely come into question and we, as a family of artists and the communities we serve and play in will all be the poorer should any of these companies fold.

Nor can writers, visual artists or an individual artist of any discipline view with optimism the alternative Senator Brandis is extolling, namely his new National Program for Excellence in the Arts. The Draft Guidelines to the National Program for Excellence in the Arts explicitly identifies individual artists will not be supported. And what further adds insult to injury, the proposed NPEA will not disclose who the Minister will favour with his largesse making a mockery of the established norm, namely an arms length from government, transparent and peer led assessment process.

The blowback will now be felt acutely as individual artists and the small to medium cultural and creative industries sector are forced to plug yet another hole in their operational budgets with a likely consequence that even further pressure will be applied to state government and local government arts budgets to fill the void. In Tasmania where the arts budget has been annually reduced for some years, artists are not just competing for an ever-diminishing slice of the funding pie. We are now competing for the crumbs off the table.

As the consequences of the May Federal Budget are still being processed, it gives one pause to reflect on examples of Australia Council supported projects from the recent past that have delivered powerful professional development opportunities for Tasmania. I think of one in particular, Performance Incubator, a multi partnered project that met Australia Council funding with Arts Tasmania, Ten Days on the Island and Tasmania Performs support.

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The attached YouTube video link to a five-minute video that I was involved with producing, details the impact of Performance Incubator. This once off project brought together twenty of Tasmania’s leading theatre artists together in Tarraleah, in remote, central Tasmania together with six members of Elevator Repair Service, an acclaimed theatre ensemble based in New York City. As the participants interviewed frequently identify, the privilege of bringing together such an eclectic band of artists was only viable thanks to significant Australia Council funding support. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yMTCk3axc8

Yet the grim reality is that projects such as this are precisely what is at stake for the small to medium sector as the Budget papers explicitly state that the Australia Council must find $7.3 million worth of ‘efficiencies’ through reduced funding for ArtStart, Capacity Building and Artist in Residence programs. Capacity building projects like Performance Incubator, a ten-month program of performing artist professional development, project nurturing, mentoring and support may well struggle to be supported again. I dread to think crucial development opportunities such as these will be denied to future generations of not only Tasmanian performing artists but also all artists working outside the major organisation structures.

I am happy to engage in further communication and thank you for the opportunity to raise my deep concern at the policy overreach of the incumbent Minister for the Arts.

Best wishes,

Jane Longhurst

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