Media Statement - 14th September 2007
GARRETT: Arts will become increasingly central to our national wellbeing and prosperity.
There is no doubt that the Arts reflect the nation’s soul. They are the mirror that reflects who we are as a people. And it’s our contention that for 11 years the Arts have existed more on the margins they have in the centre of our political and social and cultural engagement.
So I am absolutely delighted to be able to introduce to you today Labor’s New Directions for the Arts and identify some of the key elements we’ve located as being critical to having a strong and vibrant artistic cultural endeavour in this country.
The first thing to say is that Labor has a strong tradition of the supporting the Arts. It’s a tradition that was clearly manifest in the period of the Whitlam Government and Prime Minister Paul Keating in his term. He was a very strong powerful advocate for the Arts.
We haven’t had leadership from Government at the Federal level that has spoken to the good purpose and the enriching capacity that the Arts have. (Not) since we’ve had a Labor Governments in power.
The second thing we haven’t had is a defence of artists and their endeavour. Nowhere was this more evident than the proposed sedition legislation, and that legislation ultimately did travel through the Parliament. And clearly absent were the voices of Federal Arts Ministers or others defending the rights that artists have to express themselves in a free and open society. Through their creativity, through their words, through their visual work, through their output.
We’ve identified a number of key elements which we think go to the heart of an Arts policy.
They include being clear that we must encourage and amplify the exposure that young Australians have to the Arts; particularly in education but also once they begin their journey and begin their career. They ought to be enabled to produce that work and companies should be in a position to take up that work.
There are a number of key initiatives and new directions for the Arts. They include:
A commitment to a resale royalty scheme for visual artists, an issue of extraordinary contention in a political process that sees the Conservatives in the Parliament unwilling to accept that a resale royalty scheme will provide substantial benefits to artists. A resale royalty scheme will provide substantial benefits to artists, particularly to indigenous artists who in many instances experience considerable escalations in prices of their work from the point of sale.
The second thing we are committed to is a programme called ArtStart.
We think that the situation that many practising artists find themselves in as they come in and out of paid work and in and out of the social welfare system, needs to take into account their conditions and circumstances and (inaudible) opportunities to further their involvement in work, even if at specific points in time they are not specifically being remunerated for it.
We’re committed to an independent and transparent Australia Council.
It’s clear that the AusCo has an extremely important function in the delivery of arts programs, it’s also clear that it creates considerable frustration - particularly amongst arts practitioners – at the high level of bureaucracy that exist in AusCo. And the way in which the funding cycle does not see substantial attention given to the development of art at the community level; art and creative endeavour that is fresh, invigorating, but doesn’t necessarily operate within the major performing companies and (which) doesn’t receive, I don’t think, the level of support that it needs to.
We have a strong commitment to indigenous art, and I want to welcome our guests here on that basis.
The resale royalty scheme will certainly provide opportunity for decent remuneration for indigenous artists. More generally I think we recognise that for Australians, quite often we are defining ourselves at least in part by the extraordinary cultural productivity and resonance that our indigenous artists have displayed in the past and continue to display.
The next thing which we’ve identified is the need for a Strategic Digital Industry Plan. If there’s one area where the Howard Government has dropped the ball more than any other that I can identify, it’s in their complete absence of reasonable activity and progress on the question of the digital action agenda (inaudible).
Just this morning I was participating in the launch of the Google Election 07 site. It’s very clear that web-based communication forms – whether in politics or whether it’s creativity generally – are playing greater and greater roles in people’s lives. Certainly for artists who may move across mediums and frankly move from artistic work into other paid work of one kind or another in the digital arena. And yet this remains invisible to the hand of government.
A Rudd Labor Government does have a vision for the arts and I certainly strongly say that it the time for us to fully support the creative endeavour of Australians is here.
I commit and commend Labor’s New Directions for the Arts to you, committing that if we were to take Government we would strongly represent and advocate for the artistic endeavour in all its forms in all parts of the country.
We would be proud of the work that Australian artists have produced in the past, whether our authors, our painters, our visual artists, our choreographers … and we would strongly encourage and amplify that support in national engagement and national debate about what arts and creativity mean to us as a nation.
Having said that, I will take any questions and thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
JOURNALIST: Don’t resale royalties tend to benefit artists who are already making a lot of money?
GARRETT: I think that there is absolutely no doubt that for indigenous artists in particular, but for artists more generally when they are seeing a rapid escalation in the price of their works over a short period of time, the capacity for them to take a benefit from a resale royalty is considerable.
I make one other point about resale royalties and that is that those jurisdictions that are taking to resale royalties, particularly the European jurisdictions, we actually now do operate in a global market and it is entirely appropriate for us to be looking at the way in which thoughtful jurisdictions have to deal with the way in which artists’ early works, their first works, is very low (price) but who subsequently see very great escalation in the price of their work.
JOURNALIST: How would you make sure this doesn’t just simply benefit artists with a high profile; don’t artists with a small profile the ones who need the most help?
GARRETT: Well there’s a range of different measures we’ve got there to support artists and let’s look at this way. Look at an artist of any profile who sess an escalation of greater than 100 or even 1000%. Whether they are extremely well known or an emerging artist - it seems to me to be both a matter of fairness and recognition of the need to take remuneration to build your own practice that provides ample justification for us for introducing resale royalty.
JOURNALIST: How much (INAUDIBLE)
GARRETT: Well, we’d want to look very closely at the proposals that are on foot. It needs to be a scheme that works effectively and is capable of being administered well. I notice that NAVA (National Association of Visual Artists) are here and there’s a great deal of information and proposals that are already sitting there. (So) we are going to look very closely at it, work with the department if we are in a position to do so and determine a retail royalty scheme that meets the needs of providing adequate remuneration and also effective operation.
JOURNALIST: Mr Garrett could you elaborate a little bit more on changes to the Australia Council?
GARRETT: I’m happy to do that. The thing in this paper that you’ll identify is that we recognise the importance of the role of the Australia Council and we reaffirm that the appropriate method for the delivery of the funding of programs is through an arms-length entity like the Australia Council. At the same time we are well aware that there is significant anxiety and concern, particularly amongst arts practitioners, about the scope of the programme of the Council and also about the way in which decisions are made in terms of funding.
One thing you can say clearly is this. The Australia Council is an organisation that has to wrestle with the situation that it finds itself in (inaudible)…. This Government is a Government that has resourced arts, rescued problems that exist but not solved them, gone to the heart of solving those problems.
Now we have issues of sustainability in funding in arts which are perennial, money needed for infrastructure which is perennial, we have issues in terms of questions of funding for both major performing arts companies and other arts forms.
The Australia Council needs to confront those issues. It needs to be given an opportunity to do that, and I know that they’ll want to take it. Particularly in terms of the many boards that administer and make decisions about funds. What we say, as we’ve said in relation to something like the ABC board, is that you need to have systems of board appointments that reflect the diversity of the community. That is seen, not only in the transparent sense to do that, but also reflect art and art expertise as well as business expertise. And reflect the non-partisan diversity of our society and of the community. We really want to look at that as a necessary task for the Australia Council. We also want to look closely at the question of whether or not the delivery of programmes that come through DCITA and this point in time is appropriate into the future.
It seems to us that for the Australia Council to be a robust body that has enough weight and substance and solidity to perform its tasks, it needs to perform a full range of tasks, as we understand it was originally conceived. That would include the delivery of programs.
JOURNALIST: So, more money then?
GARRETT: Well, this is the perennial question. What we would say is that it would be critical for the delivery of arts through the federal budget to be done in such a way that the Australia Council has the opportunity to fulfil what we think its mandate is. That includes providing not only through the major performing arts, but also through other relevant programs, including programs currently through DCITA, and the possibility of taking that suite of programs for delivery.
JOURNALIST: Does that include film?
GARRETT: No, we’re not saying that about film. What we’re saying in relation to film is that we’re going to watch closely the merger that’s underway. We supported the idea that there should be a merger between the Australian Film Commission and FFC and we recognise that there are some efficiencies and some synergies that will derive there. But we do say that we need to have a screen industry plan; that the track record of our visual film and television industry here in Australia has been a pretty poor one.
We’re seeing some extremely worrying trends in terms of the amount drama that we’ve seen on the ABC. In terms of the amount of production hours that we’ve seen as a function of budget overtime; in our capacity to engage on a much more sustainable basis overseas productions that come and use our facilities. We’ll monitor closely, we’ll watch it closely, but certainly we’re committed to the Australian Screen Authority.