Holding arts funds to account

Participation in cultural and creative activities has fallen in recent years, but Australians are still keen film, theatre and concert goers, book buyers and art gallery visitors – when something catches their attention.

Many quality and appealing films, plays, musicals, novels, nonfiction works and exhibitions more than pay their way, which underscores the need to ensure that the finite public funding that is allocated to creative endeavours is well spent.

Creative Australia, which superseded the Australia Council as the federal government’s principal arts investment and advisory body, has drawn attention for the wrong reasons. Almost a third of the panellists who recommend grants, Noah Yim revealed on Monday, have been recipients of grants themselves in the past six years – amounting to $17.7m of $102m given to those individuals across time. The Australian is not suggesting improper conduct has taken place. But the cosy “peer assessment” arrangement has raised concerns about potential cronyism and manipulation.

The body also has courted controversy reinstating artist Khaled Sabsabi to represent Australia at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Creative Australia dropped Sabsabi from that role in February following criticism of two of his earlier works, including a 2007 video depicting former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in beams of light that Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art described as “suggestive of divine illumination”.

Celebrated Jewish klezmer folk fusion band Chutney, in contrast, was knocked back time and again by arts funding bodies. So it raised its own seed money to record its album and has won numerous international accolades and made one of the most prominent Australian contributions to world music of recent years.

Budgets are tight, so millions of taxpayer dollars spent on arts grants, festivals and events need rigorous auditing and oversight. It is important to avoid cronyism and ideological agendas and to ensure, as with sports grants, that limited resources go to the most deserving recipients, with a clear public benefit.