Waleed Aly has come under attack for failing to stand up for artists or arts funding in a controversial new essay which lambasts the Australia Council for capitulating to the government in the wake of funding cuts.
But Aly, who sits on the 12-member board of the Australia Council, has come out and said that it is not his job to speak on behalf of the Australia Council simply because he is a prominent Australian celebrity.
As Fairfax reports, When the Goal Posts Move, an excerpt of which you can read via ArtsHub, is academic and writer Ben Eltham’s critique of the way the Australia Council has handled recent hits to its budget.
In one excerpt, Eltham attacks Aly for staying silent about the issue of arts funding in Australia, despite the fact that the The Project host is famous for his nightly diatribes about issues facing Australia.
“Aly’s public record on Australia Council funding is plain enough: there is none,” Eltham writes. “The Gold Logie winner could have been the arts sector’s most eloquent spokesperson: after all, he has his own television show.”
“But at the time of writing, he had so far declined to publicly defend the agency.” As Fairfax notes, Aly has responded to Eltham’s attack, saying it’s not his job to defend the Australia Council.
“I’ve not been given a public-facing role and it’s not for me to usurp the chairman or the CEO’s function just because I happen to work in the media,” said Aly, adding that as a board member he is not free to comment on government funding of the Council.
“We have an advisory role – and there has certainly been plenty of advice given,” he said. “We can also outline the impact policy will have on the Council – which, we do regularly, and which was evidenced in, for example, the collapse of six-year funding.”
“Beyond that, we have to do the best we can with the resources we’re assigned.” But Eltham is adamant that a “different membership might have acted differently in response to the unprecedented attack”.
“It’s difficult to imagine Donald Horne, when he was chair, staying silent if this had happened on his watch,” Eltham said. “But nothing has come to pass. In response to the wholesale assault on the organisation’s statutory independence, the Australia Council rolled over.”
