Arts ministers weighed freeze on all funds to APY collective

A meeting of arts ministers last year canvassed options that would freeze all future government funding to the controversial APY Art Centre Collective until there was a change of management.

SA Arts Minister Andrea Michaels. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

A meeting of arts ministers last year canvassed options that would freeze all future government funding to the APY Art Centre Collective until there was a change of management in the organisation.

In mid-December, the Northern Territory, South Australian and federal arts ministers met to discuss the findings of an independent panel’s probe into the APYACC.

So concerned were the ministers with what the panel had uncovered that they canvassed options to freeze all future government funding.

The virtual meeting, which included federal Arts Minister Tony Burke and his SA and NT counterparts Chansey Paech and Andrea Michaels, and others, took place around December 15 last year.

The ministers were gathering to get a briefing on a four-month investigation into the APYACC made by an independent panel of experts.

The findings, they were told, were damning.

The panel had found evidence of wrongdoing in every area that it had been tasked to investigate, from fraud, bullying and white staff painting on Indigenous canvases.

The ministers were told that these matters should be referred to the appropriate bodies, the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations and the Australian Consumer & Competition Commission, for them to undertake further investigation.

The Australian understands that the ministers also discussed measures that would ban the APYACC from applying for federal or state funding while its current management remained in place.

After a separate independent investigation by the industry’s ethical body, the Indigenous Art Code, the APYACC had been expelled from the code last June for alleged unethical practices.

The ministers discussed the possibility of introducing rules that would require all Indigenous art organisations to be a member of the Indigenous Art Code as a prerequisite for accessing government funding – which would effectively freeze the APYACC out of all state and federal funding.

There was concern about harming individual artists who worked on the APY lands, and over the financial viability of the APYACC itself without government funding.

However, the ministers were told that the APYACC had some $500,000 in cash reserves and an annual income of about $16m. Financial reports lodged with ORIC indicate that the APYACC had revenue last year of $5.3m – it is not known if the $16m figure quoted to the ministers includes the income of individual arts centres within the collective.

The ministers also discussed the possibility of resuming funding to the organisation if the current leadership was removed.