Darwin Festival is not exactly a staple of the Australian touring circuit. Local artists rarely include it on their tour schedules and you can forget about international artists, which is why any hit to the area’s cultural calendar is a big deal.
In particular, the controversy currently surrounding Darwin Festival must have local residents concerned they might lose one of the biggest cultural events to take place in the city. This year’s lineup, for example, is headlined by Sarah Blasko.
But as ABC News reports, festival organisers are threatening to cancel this year’s event — scheduled to go down 4th August — if the NT Government doesn’t cough up almost half a million dollars in funding within the next few days.
The government, however, is reticent to hand over the cash, accusing organisers of irresponsible spending habits, taking particular issue with the fact that organisers recently used government funds to book Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett.
Darwin Festival chair Clare Martin said Darwin Festival 2016 will not go ahead if the government does not proceed with $450,000 worth of remaining contract payments, insisting the threat “is not an exaggeration”.
“Unless we have that cash in the next few days we can’t pay the artists’ contracts and simply we will be in an insolvent position,” she said. But one can see why the government might be feeling a little stingy towards the event.
Country Liberals Minister for the Arts Gary Higgins has heavily criticised the festival in the wake of a damning report by auditors Deloitte, who looked into the finances of the troubled event, accusing event organisers of mismanagement.
For example, the audit found that the event hired six extra full-time staffers, costing a total of $350,000, despite receiving no additional funding to cover the employees’ salaries. And booking a former Labour politician isn’t a popular choice either.
“Why have we got Peter Garrett coming up, I mean why in the hell are we paying that much money — I don’t know how much — but I presume we are paying a lot of money for him to come up and perform… when we are in a financial hole?” said Mr Higgins.
As ABC News notes, Mr Higgins threatened to place Darwin Festival into financial administration over the booking of Garrett.
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He insisted the money should have gone to local artists. “I fought very hard in next year’s budget for arts grants to help promote local artists here,” he said. “My view is there has got to be a much bigger emphasis on local artists.”
However, organisers have defended themselves in a statement, insisting they responded to last year’s $342,906 deficit by “stringently” interrogating the budget and reducing “all possible discretionary spending”.
“Despite being the subject of the [Deloitte] report and contributing significantly to its content, the festival has not received or seen a copy of the report and has not been briefed on its recommendations,” they added.
