2023–24 Pre-Budget Submission

Strategic investment to secure Australia’s potential as a cultural powerhouse

This submission outlines costed recommendations to inform the updating of Australia’s policy and investment settings to ensure Australians have access to arts and cultural experiences wherever they live.

Public investment in culture is already an intergovernmental and cross-portfolio effort, with potential gains from purposeful coordination. Unlocking more effective private and  philanthropic investment will strengthen Australia’s cultural and creative activity and improve access for all Australians.

The actions recommended in this submission provide a scaffold for more effective collaboration between the three levels of government and both commercial and philanthropic investors, as well as providing a clearer operating environment for a sector that relies on the long-term  development of skills and products.

COVID-19 has necessitated the beginning of significant reform within Australia’s cultural  industries. There is an opportunity to shape this change through strategic leadership and  investment to embolden our cultural landscape. This can help accelerate Australia’s social and economic recovery and resilience as it rebuilds from the pandemic as well as recent natural disasters.

Australia can become a cultural powerhouse whose compelling creativity is locally loved,  nationally valued and globally influential. The federal government has a critical role to play in  achieving this potential.

Key Points

The potential

Australia can become a cultural powerhouse, generating social, economic and
environmental benefits.

The context

Cultural participation matters to Australians, and they understand that culture and creativity have a binding effect in the face of disruption and dislocation.

Australia affirmed culture as a “global public good” and urged the “preservation and strengthening of the financing for culture” through the 2022 Mondiacult UNESCO Declaration for Culture.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) have highlighted productivity gains both from and within cultural and creative industries, in the context of COVID-19 recovery.

Australia is currently 23rd of 31 OECD countries for government expenditure on recreation, culture and religion as a percentage of GDP.

The opportunity

Public investment in culture is already an intergovernmental and cross-portfolio effort with potential gains from purposeful coordination, including unlocking more effective private and philanthropic investment.

Recommendations

1. The bipartisan proposal for a Productivity Commission inquiry ‘into the legislative arrangements which govern funding of artistic programs and activities at all levels of government’ should proceed.
2. In the context of the new National Cultural Policy, existing patterns of cross-portfolio  investment and the international evidence of impacts across broad public policy agendas, the government should prescribe that a percentage of total government expenditure be directed towards cultural funding in a coordinated and intentional manner. The aforementioned Productivity Commission inquiry should provide a recommended target percentage.
3. To support the inclusion of cultural measures within the Measuring What Matters Statement, and the implementation of the new National Cultural Policy:
   • Conduct an environmental scan that builds and regularly updates our shared understanding  of the dynamic health and economic pressures on Australian arts and culture (both supply and demand), and where the investments will be most effective.
   • Survey cultural funding by governments and quantify the economic contribution of cultural and creative activity every year. To enhance transparency of these investments, experiment with reporting on the National Cultural Policy’s performance and deepen the granularity of the data collection and reporting instruments (e.g., add reporting ‘by portfolio’ and ‘by postcode’).
4. Include in forward estimates a funding envelope to support delivery of a multi-decadal plan to establish an infrastructure and workforce development pipeline (specifying short, medium, and longer-term goals and minimum required investment over multiple decades).