Australia’s budget was released
today to a chorus of discontent amongst the many people hit hard by the
countless cutbacks that struck those who could afford it the least; namely,
artists.
The country’s core arts council
and mediator for grant payments – The Australian Council – will have 28.2
million taken from its budget over four years, amounting to about 9 million a
year. Although it has not been decided where this 9 million will be trimmed,
the country’s leading arts companies will remain safe from any budget cuts, as
most of them are already locked into three year contracts. This protects
organisations such as Opera Australia and The Australian Ballet, but it also
means smaller institutions and individuals seeking grants will be the people
losing this 28.2 million: the people who require these grants the most.
Henceforth, these cutbacks will seriously limit Australia’s capacity to foster
new talent, which will only further diminish the viability of the arts sector
in Australia for the long run. Australia’s music industry will likely suffer
the most because it largely relies on smaller businesses and the hard work of
individuals, as opposed to being guarded by a larger network of people such as
a theatre company or an orchestra.
Many Australians involved in the
arts have weighed in on the debate, such as Virginia Lovett, executive director
of The Melbourne Theatre Company. Whilst her company will secure its regular
$2.1 million grant, it will be unable to fund smaller projects such as ‘Neon’
and ‘In the Mix’, which both help emerging artists develop their craft and
require separate grants. Lovett describes the impact of these budget cutbacks
as a knock-on effect to the larger organisations, “who will have to do some
more heavy lifting in terms of artist development.” David Berthold, The
artistic director of La Boite theatre Company in Brisbane and the artistic
director of Brisbane Festival, echoes Lovett’s misgivings and believes, “It’s the
individual artists and new projects that will bear the brunt – all those
applying for funds coming up.” Likewise, in the music industry, opera companies
and major orchestras may continue with little interference from the government,
but small bands or solo artists will receive less exposure and less
opportunities to develop their skills. Lovett thus believes that in ten years
time, “the artists who should have been busily developing their craft won’t
have had as much of an opportunity to,” which will leave a major gap in the
arts sector.
These budget cuts have already
begun, with The Asia-Pacific Centre for Arts and Cultural Leadership scheduled
in for the guillotine. Additionally, Screen Australia, the country’s leading
film company, responsible for internationally successful and critically
acclaimed films such as ‘Animal Kingdom’ and ‘Samson and Delilah’, will suffer
one of the largest losses of all, with 25.1 million deducted over four years.
In an industry that is already lean on funding, this will no doubt have a
detrimental impact on the film industry. The only new means of funding the
Australian Government have offered is $1 million to build a new boarding hall
for the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne, which will hardly supplement the
dire impact all these cutbacks will have on institutions, individuals and
Australian arts culture.
The major impact the new budget
will have on musicians has largely gone unnoticed by the media, because the way
it will effect the average musician’s lifestyle is related to far more issues
than arts funding. Most musicians do not receive any funding from the
government to develop their music and have to organize their lives as best as
they can so that they can independently support their craft. This is already an
extremely difficult lifestyle to live as a constant balancing act of procuring
basic needs, maintaining a career and trying to fit in time to work on music.
The new budget will make this process even harder, especially for musicians and
artists trying to find jobs in Australia’s meager creative industries sector,
which will undoubtedly become even smaller once these budget cutbacks are set
into motion.
What will really make it difficult
for artists to maintain a functional lifestyle, whilst working on their craft,
are the modifications to unemployment and youth benefit schemes. People under
the age of 25 will no longer be eligible for the dole at all and will instead
have to apply for youth allowance, which is worth about $100 less a fortnight,
whilst people eligible for either Newstart or Youth Allowance must be under the
age of 30. Anybody seeking financial support from the government will now
have to wait a preliminary 6 months before payments commence, a completely
pointless intermediary process that will achieve nothing except snatch a few
bucks from an already impoverished individual. Once a person is eligible for
either of these schemes, they will then have to engage in the compulsory ‘Work
For the Dole’ program 25 hours a week. And if the individual refuses to work
any of the suggested jobs? Income payments will be withdrawn for eight weeks
and the only way it can be regained is by doing additional activities or
demonstrating financial hardship.
To put even more pressure on the
youth of Australia, these payments will only be available for a maximum of 6
months a year, after which, all financial support will be terminated.
Nevertheless, if you can’t afford to juggle your basic needs and find yourself
cut off cold turkey from your Newstart or Youth Allowance payments, the paid
parental scheme might be a good option, especially since it now amounts to $50,
000 for 6 months. If you can’t find a way to impregnate yourself into financial
stability, there’s always the Australian Defense Force, which had zero budget cutbacks
and instead received $191.8 million to finance it’s ADF Gap Year program.
However, those expecting a little bit of action and a little bit of an
adventure in an exotic foreign land should probably reconsider signing up and
instead backpack to Europe to avoid this entire mess.
It makes little sense to provide
less unemployment support for the youth of Australia, who face more challenges
when it comes to securing stable employment, with less experience than people
over the age of 30. As a result of these convoluted modifications, many
Australian youths will not receive any financial support and will have to
juggle the workload of a university degree with full-time work to support
themselves; factor in any music commitments and you have an impossible situation.
This means something would have to be sacrificed to make this lifestyle
manageable, which will more often than not be an economically unfeasible
university degree. Music careers are typically best fostered during one’s youth
and so, for any musician serious about honing their craft and building up a
reputation, other aspects of their lifestyle will have to be sacrificed in
order to maintain the momentum of this process. All work and no play is not a
reasonable mantra to drill into the youth of Australia; forcing a musician to
give up their craft for a degree they don’t like or a job they hate is simply
not practical and will not yield productive members of society.
The Australian Government have
thus effectively set up a situation where creative artists will be poorer and
less educated; not only will the hypothetical artist in question have access to
fewer facilities to develop their artistic skills by cutting back grants, it
will also be economically impracticable for the artist to refine their talents
within a university setting, or even build a degree-based career at all and
work on their music as a hobby at the same. The future for the youth of
Australia is looking bleak with these budget cutbacks, which only demonstrates
the government’s lack of consideration for the cultural and sociological
development of our country in the long run. Whilst these cutbacks might aid the
government’s endeavor to return Australia to surplus, the development of
Australia’s youth will be seriously compromised, which will have its own set of
consequences in the future.
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