Backed by the Greens and three independents, the Australian Labor Party has recently formed a government following the 21 August 2010 elections. Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced her new ministry on 11 September 2010, with Simon Crean appointed Minister for Regional Affairs, Local Government and the Arts.
Under the arts policy it issued in the week preceding the elections, Labor promised $10 million over five years (amounting to a yearly average of $2 million) for the Australia Council to invest in new works, presentations and fellowships. According to the Labor media release, the "new funding will ensure the Australia Council can focus on priority areas including: support for young and emerging artists, the creation of new Australian work (across all arts forms) and assist artists in building more sustainable careers." The policy consolidates the role of the Australia Council in delivering arts funding despite calls for a re-thinking of the model from some players in the sector who complain of the arts agency's poor funding record outside the "heritage" arts.
Unfortunately, Labor's policy does not mention how funding will be directed to assisting artists in building more sustainable careers, in particular what type of measures (for example professional practice education) will be promoted to achieve this goal. Arts Law finds more comfort in the arts policy of the Australian Greens, including measures to extend the resale royalty scheme to all existing arts works, to enable emerging artists to access small business start-up grants and schemes as well as to introduce legislation to protect intellectual and artistic property rights. While the Greens' policy does not give any detail on the later point, Arts Law reads it as a measure to reinforce copyright laws rather than erode them in view of the Greens' cited goal of protecting artists' intellectual property rights.
Possibly, the grouping of the arts portfolio with the regional affairs and local government portfolios may be detrimental to the former in a government which will need to focus on regional affairs to keep the support of the Independents on which its legitimacy depends. The grouping seems, however, consistent with Labor's and the Greens' policy to increase access to arts and cultural experiences in rural and regional areas.
Simon Crean has mentioned his long association with aspects of the arts industry (in particular the creative arts and the rock music industry) in previous roles as well as an interest in the sector. Whether his declared interest in ballet and opera is sufficient to capture the importance of all art forms in our society and the need to invigorate the support for emerging artists remains to be seen. An interest in the arts is, however, a good start.
Simon Crean has been appointed Minister for the Arts. Simon Crean – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2010, uploaded to Flickr by the World Economic Forum. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
As in the past, Arts Law is committed to working constructively with the government and any of its arts agencies to obtain the best outcome for artists and arts organisation. As always, we will be advocating on behalf of artists for better protection of their intellectual property, a fairer share in the proceeds generated by their work and a greater recognition of the role of creative expression in a functioning society.
Rebecca Laubi is a senior solicitor at Arts Law.