The Creative Australia bill 2023 is more about politics than art. It is legislation designed to modernise the Australia Council, but in reality it’s driving artists and writers overseas in search of art and culture.

Modernising art has resulted in a era where junk is put on display in the town square and the real works of art are being torn down. Creative Australia celebrates the primacy of left-wing controlled politics over entertainment, humour, culture and class.

The injection of a staggering $286 million into a new Creative Australia in the coming year is an unwarranted extravagance at this time. It’s the kind of expenditure you would never expect to see when a country is in economic and health crises. Many Australians are struggling with mental health issues and seeking help — the kind of professional help that the government cut by $200 million last year.

Instead of welding politics to the arts we should allow the people to genuinely reward artwork and other creative works that appeal to them. Let the public decide what they genuinely connect with. Artists that produce rubbish should not be funded and flattered because of their politics.

More deserving artists are being shut out of Creative Australia because of wokism. It’s no wonder Australians are going overseas for their culture.

You cannot buy culture Minister Burke, no matter how much taxpayers’ money you throw at it.

Transcript

As a servant to the many amazing people who make up our great Queensland community—our one great Queensland community—I rise to speak on the Creative Australia Bill 2023. It is legislation that is so out of touch that it’s my duty—indeed my pleasure—to make remarks on this legislation, which implements a previous bill to modernise the Australia Council. ‘Modernisation’ is a word few Australians wish to hear when it comes to the arts. Modern art, with its ugly exterior and substandard political shouting, is the reason so many Australians turn their back on the local arts community, sadly, choosing instead to seek their cultural fix overseas, amongst the historical buildings and ruins and the splendour of Western civilisation. A single marble pillar from the Roman age holds more fascination to the typical Australian than the entire offering of last year’s Australia Council. Despite the terrifying amount of money spent on the arts, it’s not the beating heart of Australian culture. It’s a desert of talent, accentuated with outcrops of brutalism, obscurity, absurdity—installations made from literal trash, the obscene, the lazy and the inconsequential masquerading as talent.

Creative Australia celebrates the primacy of left-wing controlled politics over entertainment, humour, culture and class. Minister Burke has taken up his position on the throne presiding over this self-indulgent mess—this slop. To stop the overpaid leaders of the art world snapping at his ankles, he’s decided to throw even more taxpayer money at them. It’s a terrible shame, because the real artists and writers of Australia are forced to leave our country and seek a career overseas, where the merit of their work is valued above the artist’s identity.

Creative Australia and Minister Burke are failing the real arts community and, with that, failing everyday Australians, failing our country. Remember, this is the era when local councils erect bits of junk in the town square while tearing down bronze and stone statues—works of real, actual art, erected to honour the real builders of Australia. Our so-called arts community is busy deconstructing its historical betters while replacing them with nothing of lasting merit. It’s no wonder the Australia Council had to spend money on surveys, trying to work out why their performances are empty and, as a result, changing their name, not their product. That’s what seems to be the outcome.

Modernisation, the key part of this proposal, can be best illustrated by using a scene outside the Melbourne art gallery. By the way, yes, this really happened. Imagine this: customers were queueing to gain access to a collection of Renaissance masters while a modern piece of installation art outside involved adults dressed as sheep, pretending to eat the grass and baa baaing at the customers. Can you believe this!

Senator McGrath: Yes, I do!

Senator Roberts: That’s the sad part! Considering this was before the age of COVID, perhaps we should have taken that as a warning for how eager modernity is to embrace a sheeplike existence. Suck it up!

In the middle of an economic crisis, as a result of government overreaction and wastage in the COVID years, the government has decided to undertake an unnecessary refurnishing of the arts, using money taken from places where it would have actually done some damn good. Modernising the arts and needlessly rebranding its bureaucracy is something a bored government does on a slow day when it’s rolling in a surplus, not when we’re in a crisis—a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a moral crisis, a social crisis.

First, we sat through Minister Burke and his 14 town hall meetings, worth $40,000, so that he could introduce himself to the cultural sector, apparently forgetting that he is caretaker of an existing and well-known department and not a freshly appointed CEO with a fragile ego. Instead of spending $40,000 of taxpayers’ money on himself, perhaps Minister Burke could have given that money to the cultural sector and sent out a few tweets saying, ‘Hi,’ or maybe ‘G’day,’ and called the whole thing done. Maybe that’s what he could have done.

The rest of the legislation behaves like the Tim Tam genie’s infinite arts grants. We are told that in order to deliver the national cultural policy, of which this legislation is in service, $286 million will be provided in the next financial year—$286 million in 12 months. That’s more than a quarter of a billion dollars. For perspective, $200 million is roughly the cost of the one million mental health appointments that the Labor government decided to cut from Medicare last year. Labor has looked at where that money should be spent and decided it’s better off being handed over to this new Creative Australia and not on psychology sessions for Australians struggling with mental health.

What is it that the Australian taxpayer gets for that $286 million, aside from a bloated bureaucracy that spends its time drinking champagne and shaking hands, perhaps calling patrons of fine arts ‘sheep’ again? When was the last time the Australia Council showed some real diversity and inclusion and funded artworks and cultural endeavours from conservative artists? Where are the grants to preserve colonial artists and the enormous work they did recording Australia’s pioneer days? What about artworks dedicated to the Western values of liberty and individualism? What could be more important? Artists protesting against the cruelty of big-state authority and abuse during the COVID years perhaps? That’ll be a long wait, a very long wait. Their voices are exiled from this so-called inclusive publicly funded boondoggle.

The sort of arts and culture funded by the previous Australia Council is not rich and diverse; it’s a saturated market of climate-apocalypse propaganda, seen through the prism of race and religion and ideology. Their corporate strategy says exactly that:

It includes emphases on access and equity, advocacy for the vital role of arts and culture, and investing in arts and creativity that reflects and connects the many communities that make up contemporary Australia.

It doesn’t say, ‘We are committed to funding excellence and achievement for talented individuals in the arts community.’ It doesn’t say that. The Australia Council even threw in some World Economic Forum propaganda for good measure, stating:

The technologies of the fourth industrial revolution are transforming and disrupting industries, economies, and how we interact with our world and each other.

Wonderful! This isn’t art. It’s politics—international, unelected bureaucratic politics and ideology of the elites, the globalist predators, masquerading as art and funded by taxpayers. What was it doing on the Australia Council website? Why? What was it? And will Creative Australia adopt the same fealty to foreign powers? Two hundred and eighty-six million dollars is the reward for hijacking the arts sector to promote a woke ideology over an artistic one. I’ll say that again: a woke ideology over an artistic ideology, an artistic culture. The inclusion of Aboriginal art as the predominant destination of Creative Australia funding suggests this is another bribe to support the Voice. It’s coming at us from every angle. That shows that they’re actually desperate.

Creative Australia is advocating that the arts become all about ‘a place for every story and a story for every place’. I’m sure the public is trembling in anticipation of that agenda—’agenda’ being the operative word. It suggests the government is doubling down on woke and calling it art. The government hasn’t realised that, in order to increase the reach of arts and culture, you let the free market direct the program. That ensures that the program meets people’s real needs. You allow the people to reward artwork that appeals to and connects with them. That ensures that it meets people’s real needs.

Artists that produce rubbish should not be funded simply because they flatter the Labor-Greens-teal government. Their work is drowning out more deserving artists who are rejected because Creative Australia does not like their politics. There’s a reason working-class families in Australia save up for years to fly to the other side of the world and stand beneath Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. When was the last time a product of the Australia Council left millions of international tourists in awe, questioning the human limits of skill and vision? The answer is never—never—because you cannot buy culture, no matter how much taxpayer money Minister Burke throws at it.