Page 4108 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 26 November 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MR SMYTH: You cannot table a policy?
Mr Whitney: No; I cannot table the developments that you are asking for.
You would have thought that in 2½ years, at $10 million a year, $25 million later, the government might have something to show for the document that the minister tabled. I would hesitate to call it a wally document, because it would be ruled out of order and that would be most unfortunate. But the response from this minister is simply contempt of the arts community.
The official went on:
We certainly have been using the arts fund as a funding mechanism …
That is the only outcome. They have changed the way that they fund things. This is so typical of a Labor government. It is all about the inputs. We put so much money into this that we spend all our time adjusting how we put the money into it. And that is because there are so many failures of this minister. Who remembers the fringe festival procurement that was not a procurement process that led to the appointment of a director who thought Nazi strippers at a family event was appropriate? And of course, the changes to the funding arrangements have led to the funding of what the head of the Gorman House arts community described as the puerile title “Kill climate changes”. They are the changes. We have dumbed down the funding guidelines; we have not done any policy. The government has not done any policy, and there are certainly no goals or outcomes that one can measure.
I said, “Okay, I’ll keep this simple.” I said:
Can you table your KPIs for the arts framework?
And they could not. The official said:
The arts policy framework principally is the driver for our arts funding; the outcomes of the arts funding, I think, would be the way to indicate that.
But it is not what the framework says. I will read it again:
The Framework provides a structure within which arts policy and the goals and outcomes associated with policy will be developed …
After 2½ years, you have to ask who has failed here. Clearly, it is the minister for not enforcing the document that she said was guiding her time as arts minister. I then went on, and we got a further answer from the official:
Given the line of your questioning, we could certainly provide changes to the guidelines for the funding mechanism.
There is 2½ years of arts policy, with the section in community services that run the arts, and all they could table were the changes to the guidelines for the funding
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video