Australia's cultural sector is haemorrhaging money, but the federal government isn't interested in stemming the flow

Victoria’s Creative Industries minister Martin Foley was in a bullish mood last week, announcing Melbourne’s new Rising festival would come with a bespoke $2m commissioning fund for local artists. “Rising is set to play an important role as we emerge from this crisis, reigniting the exciting creative offering Victoria is known for and rebooting our visitor economy,” Foley said. It was welcome news for one of the worst-hit sectors of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the nation begins to reopen shops and schools, the cultural sector remains mostly shut, and haemorrhaging revenue. Early numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that more than half of arts and recreation businesses have closed. Grattan Institute number crunching models a 50% fall in unemployment in arts and recreation.

In the face of this crisis, state and territory governments have responded with a series of emergency grants and cultural stimulus measures. The various provincial support policies add up to a small but meaningful national stimulus for the cultural sector. All up, close to $130m has been committed by the states and territories since the Covid-19 crisis hit in March.

Victoria has been the leader, as so often when it comes to culture in Australia. Foley has announced a comprehensive suite of measures for the sector, totalling $51m so far. There is $26.3m in support for the state’s key cultural institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, the Arts Centre and Melbourne Recital Centre, as well as $13m for nearly 100 small-to-medium cultural organisations around the state. The state’s beleaguered music industry has won a $4m support package. Perhaps even more importantly, Victoria has stepped up to support artists at street level, with nearly $6m in short-notice arts grants and funding rounds, plus the $2m for new work for Rising.

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Queensland has also contributed a substantial support package, with $8m in support topped up by a further $2.5m in a subsequent announcement. The funding will go largely to small-to-medium organisations and artists. Tasmania, South Australia, the ACT, the Northern Territory and Western Australia have all announced smaller packages, of between $1.5 and $4m.

Until this weekend, New South Wales was the big hold out. The Berejiklian government has struggled with cultural policy through the crisis, losing its arts minister Don Harwin to a quarantine indiscretion and then allowing prominent Sydney cultural centre Carriageworks to collapse into receivership.

On Sunday, the premier, now acting as arts minister as well, announced a $50m “Rescue and Restart” package. “This Rescue and Restart package will ensure the survival of some of the most significant arts and cultural organisations across NSW,” Berejiklian claimed. But details about the new package are scant, and the New South Wales cultural sector is already wary of a government facing allegations that it raided arts funding pools for pork barreling.

The missing link has been the federal government. Arts minister Paul Fletcher announced a $27m support package in April, targeted to regional arts funding and Indigenous culture. The Australia Council for the Arts has also raided the piggy bank to repurpose $5m in existing funding for its “Resilience” package of quick-release grants for artists.

But repeated calls for a more substantial federal stimulus for culture have been rebuffed by Fletcher and federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Instead, Fletcher has pointed to the fact that the arts and cultural sector has access to the government’s huge jobkeeper wage subsidy.

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In April, Fletcher wrote a column for Guardian Australia where he claimed that jobkeeper “will end up being worth between $4bn and $10bn of support to the creative workforce”. Fletcher never released a justification for that figure, and the rubbery estimate seems in keeping with the broader problems with jobkeeper’s arithmetic, after treasurer Josh Frydenberg admitted to a $60bn error in forecasting last week.

There is no doubt that jobkeeper is acting to stimulate the cultural sector. Sole traders and smaller cultural organisations do seem to have been able to access the subsidy without too many issues. This has made a real impact in industries where many workers are ABN holders, such as music and visual arts.

But the flaws in jobkeeper’s design are also acute in the cultural sector. Much of the employment in arts and culture is short-term and casual, and for these workers the 12-month eligibility rule for jobkeeper has been particularly cruel. Many cultural organisations, such as regional galleries and suburban performing arts centres, are also denied jobkeeper because they belong to local or state governments. Finally, the government’s refusal to bail out universities has had flow-on effects in culture, because many artists and cultural workers have second and third jobs as casual teachers and workers in higher education.

In summary, it’s been a muddle, or at best a muddle through. The response of the states and territories has showed one of the strengths of Australian federalism: its ability to respond at local level where Canberra can’t or won’t. In particular, the emphasis on speedy grant rounds and simple paperwork has ensured that cultural stimulus has in many cases flowed quickly, reaching artists at the grass-roots.

The real question is whether the patchwork quilt of support will be enough. Without firm figures on the true size of jobkeeper, the sector is flying blind. The various state and territory packages add up to roughly 1% of cultural and creative GDP, estimated at $112bn 2016–17. This is welcome, but 1% scarcely touches the sides of a crisis the size of Covid-19.