Earlier this week, the federal government announced their budget for 2015. As Tone Deaf reported, this year’s budget included several measures that would impact on Australian music, namely a diversion of funds from the Australia Council to the Arts Ministry.

In diverting $104 million from the Australia Council, who act as the government’s arts funding and advisory body, overseeing grants and initiatives, the Liberal government said they would establish a new National Programme for Excellence in the Arts.

The funds, they said, will be spread over four years and will “deliver on a number of government priorities including providing national access to quality arts and cultural experiences”. The program will be administered by the Ministry for the Arts in Senator George Brandis’ Attorney-General’s Department.

While it still remains to be seen just what kind of impact the move will have on arts grants and cultural initiatives in the country, Australia’s arts community has already criticised the changes, calling them “disastrous”.

Rodney Hall told ABC News that he’s concerned the Australia Council would lose its discretionary powers to make informed decisions in the interests of the public. “From the artist’s point of view, and the public point of view, it’s a disaster,” he said.

“The Australia Council was set up with great care by Nugget Coombs in 1968,” Hall continued. “Central to his concern was to bypass the possibility that the public money could get into the hands of a very few people dishing it out to their friends.”

Mr Hall elaborated on the point of the Australia Council, saying its purpose was to enrich Australian society, give the public resources they would not otherwise have, and allow artists to carve out a living in Australia.

“Throughout the existence of the Australia Council its proudest achievement has been to make it possible for artists of all kinds to pursue their profession at home,” he said. However, Arts Minister, Senator George Brandis has defended the changes.

Sen Brandis said the purpose of the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA) was to expand funding to artists and arts organisation who were unable to secure funding through the Australia Council, though it remains unclear just how it will do so.

“As a result of this program, more Australian arts practitioners and organisations will be able to pursue their creative endeavours,” Sen Brandis said. But Mr Hall is adamant, saying the government’s decision has “made absolute ruins of something that took 35, 40 years to build up”.

“How we’re going to recover from it I don’t know,” he said. “The point is that this apparently was a unilateral decision and the Government’s just gone ahead and done it,” he added, raising concerns about the lack of consolation that went into the changes.

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“They don’t know how complex it is, how enormous amounts of corporate knowledge goes into what the Australia Council does.” According to ABC News, the Australia Council was not told about the changes until hours before the budget was announced.

There are also concerns in the arts community that the new measures will undermine independent arts funding. Former Australia Council chair Hilary McPhee said the Arts Ministry is going to become more powerful than the statutory authority of the Australia Council.

“Statutory authorities, as you know, have to be able to work with both sides of politics, whereas a program within the ministry has to work for the government of the day and that’s not the way to run arts funding,” she said.

However, Sen Brandis claimed during Question Time on Thursday that the reaction in the arts sector had been extremely enthusiastic. Executive Director of Regional Arts Australia John Oster said he doesn’t think the funding cuts are a disaster.

“It’s not really important who delivers the money for arts projects,” he said. What’s crucial, he added, is that “the Australia Council remains an important organisation in the ecosystem of the arts in Australia”, and “that peer assessment of arts grants is retained as a principle when these programs go to the ministry”.

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