Arts Minister Tony Burke launches Creative Australia at Sydney Theatre Company
New-look arts body Creative Australia reflects the modern realities of creative production and the expectations of modern audiences.
New name, new functions, new website, even a new logo. The body responsible for distributing federal money to artists and arts organisations has been given possibly its biggest overhaul since its forerunner, the Australian Council for the Arts, was established by John Gorton in 1968.
Creative Australia is not only a name change for the funding body formerly known as the Australia Council. Its expanded remit is intended to reflect the modern realities of creative production and the expectations of modern audiences. Significantly, it narrows the divide between what was strictly the subsidised arts sector funded by the Australia Council – the state theatre companies, opera, ballet and symphony orchestras – and commercial enterprises such as contemporary pop music.
Labor’s cultural policy, Revive, announced the overhaul in January; legislation to enact the changes was introduced in May. On Thursday morning, in a brief ceremony at Sydney Theatre Company, Arts Minister Tony Burke officially brought Creative Australia into being.
He says the curtain has gone up on a new era for Australian artists and audiences.
“We have an organisation dedicated to all the aspects of the arts that people love,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re going to a gig, whether you’re going to the theatre, whether you’re reading a novel, whether you’re hearing poetry, whether you’re in a gallery – wherever you might be, there’s now an organisation dedicated to making sure the best Australian content is part of life in Australia.
“I want as much of our music as possible to be our own. I want as many of the shows that we see to be our own. I want people to be packing a gallery – not simply because there’s some visiting exhibition from overseas, but because there’s an Australian artist on exhibition there … Our stories are worth telling. Our artists are worth watching. Our work is worth engaging with.”
Creative Australia is underwritten with almost $200m of additional funding across four years. Former advertising chief Robert Morgan remains chair of the board – its official name is the Australia Council Board of Creative Australia – and theatre director Wesley Enoch has been appointed deputy chair, leading an expanded board of 14. Adrian Collette remains as chief executive.
Two new sub-organisations have been inaugurated: Music Australia, with $69.4m, is charged with giving a boost to Australian pop and rock, and the Centre for Creative Workplaces, with $8.1m, will advise on the pay, safety and welfare of workers in the creative industries. Two additional bodies – an autonomous First Nations board ($35.5m) and Writers Australia ($19.3m) – will be introduced in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
The Centre for Creative Workplaces is led by former sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins, who produced the Respect@Work report and also led the investigation into the workplace culture at Parliament House.
Her role, an entirely new function for the arts body, is to ensure that workplaces in the creative industries are free from sexual harassment and other unwelcome behaviour. It follows some prominent cases of alleged misconduct in the performing arts including the music industry, as detailed in the Raising Their Voices report. The new body is intended to be an advocate and “safe point of call” for people who work in the creative industries but will not conduct investigations, Collette says. Matters requiring investigation will be referred to the relevant authorities.
Burke is adamant that artists and organisations seeking federal funding from Creative Australia be compliant with the minimum standards of conduct to be determined by Jenkins and Creative Workplaces.
“If you want to come for government funding for anything in my portfolio, the expectation is that you have to meet the standards of Creative Workplaces,” Burke says. “The setting of those standards will be done independently. You have a body – half employers, half workers – with the chair the authority of Kate Jenkins. It will be sensible principles that they deal with. It will take time for this to roll out, but the rule will be: if you want to come back, trying to get money through this portfolio … the minimum standards, the entry ticket to being eligible, is that you keep to the standards that are set by Creative Workplaces.”
Asked whether the allegations of coercion at the APY Arts Centre Collective – exposed by this newspaper’s “white hands on black art” investigation – would come within the scope of Creative Workplaces, Burke says standards of conduct will be determined by the Fair Work Commission and Creative Workplaces, not the minister.
“The organisation (APYACC) doesn’t have recurrent funding from the federal government – occasionally they have applied for project funding,” Burke says. “They’d be (in) the same situation as anybody else applying for funding. If there’s a relevant standard set by Creative Workplaces, they’d be expected to meet it.”
Other members of the Creative Workplaces council are Tina Lavranos, of Tasmania’s DarkLab, Michel Hryce, of the Michael Cassel Group, film director Tony Ayres, singer-songwriter Ruth Hazleton, production designer Fiona Donovan and actor Bjorn Stewart.
Music Australia commands the lion’s share of new funding, with $69.4m and an agenda to promote contemporary music through industry partnerships, skills development and export markets. Collette, as chief executive of Creative Australia, will lead the Music Australia Council, whose members also include veteran concert promoter Michael Chugg, musician Sophie Payten (aka Gordi) and Fred Leone, who performed at Thursday’s ceremony. Other members are Nathan McLay, Fred Alale, Lisa Baker, Danielle Caruana and Petrina Convey. An executive director is yet to be appointed.
While music industry bodies had argued for a stand-alone organisation similar to Screen Australia, the new body within Creative Australia will use the resources of that organisation, Collette says.
Burke says Music Australia is specifically intended to assist Australian pop and rock musicians, rather than musicians in other genres such as jazz and contemporary classical. Those other genres have been well served by existing grant-giving structures including peer review which, he says, wasn’t always appropriate for the fast-moving contemporary music scene. “If you went to the old Australia Council, it would be, ‘Put in an application and we’ll see some peer reviewers’,” he says. “By the time you got an answer, the festival had gone, the opportunity was over. The organisation very much worked, as it was meant to, within a funded world. We now have Music Australia dedicated to understanding how is a commercial world different. You look at who we put on the board, people like Michael Chugg. I reckon we have people who know the answer to that.”
With the expanded functions of Creative Australia the number of employees will increase. Collette estimates the staff level will rise from 108 last year to approximately 150, including the addition of 17 from Creative Partnerships Australia, which has been merged with Creative Australia. Additional staff will include the executive and support services for the new bodies including Music Australia and the Centre for Creative Workplaces. Board members on the councils of those bodies are not counted as employees.
Collette says the aim is to use the existing structures and expertise already within Creative Australia. “It certainly won’t be top-heavy with bureaucrats,” he says. “The whole purpose of this is to ensure it’s not. There will be a director of Music Australia, there will be a director of Creative Workplaces. They will need executive support, but it’s the opposite of top-heavy.”
Forward estimates show Creative Australia’s revenue from government will grow from $220m last year to $326m in 2026. Most of the money will continue to flow to grant programs, as total grant expenses increase from $193m to $278m. The salary expense for Creative Australia staff is projected to increase by just $9m across the same period, according to the portfolio budget statements.
“I do not think of the extra $200m over four years coming to the council, I think of it going through the council,” Collette says. “You keep the bureaucracy as slim as possible, as knowledgeable as possible, but we have the systems to efficiently distribute this money to where it has to go. We’re good at that. The cost of doing more business will be much less than if you had to recreate those systems.”
Burke says the larger board of governance is necessary to reflect the expanded functions of Creative Australia and to ensure there is appropriate skills and expertise. Other board members are Caroline Bowditch, Alexandra Dimos, Stephen Found, Rosheen Garnon, Amanda Jackes, Lindy Lee, Christine Simpson Stokes, Courtney Stewart, Kitty Taylor, Philip Watkins, Caroline Wood and Collette.
Burke thanked the previous board members who were not reappointed, being former NSW arts minister Don Harwin, former Dark Mofo artistic director Leigh Carmichael, former Channel 7 executive Mario D’orazio and journalist Marie-Louise Theile.
The morning was enlivened with some terrific performances, including Fred Leone and Birdz, the Dance Makers Collective, and Sara Mansour from the Bankstown Poetry Slam, who read a piece commissioned for the occasion.
Burke paid tribute to the Australia Council “royalty” present in the audience: former general managers Michael Lynch and Jennifer Bott, and former chair Rupert Myer.
Given the wholesale overhaul of the funding body, would Burke consider changing the name of his portfolio, to Minister for Creative Industries?
“There was an option when we were putting together the cultural policy to potentially change the title,” he says.
“I’m more interested in changing the substance and that’s what we’ve done today.”
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