Page 2614 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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It is interesting because if you go to the Arts nation: an overview of Australian arts by the Australian Council of the Arts, nationally arts and culture employ about eight per cent of the nation’s workforce. In the ACT it is 3.1 per cent; around the nation it is eight per cent. It delivers 6.6 per cent of GDP around the nation. In the ACT it is about 1.3 per cent of value add. It may be that they are talking different things, but in terms of employment, according to the Arts Council document:
Australia’s copyright industries have arts and cultural activity at their core. They generate over $93 billion in economic activity (6.6% of GDP) and employ 8 percent of the nation’s workforce.
It goes on to say:
The cultural sector contributes 4.0 percent of Australia’s GDP, similar to levels in the United States, Canada and Spain.
In the ACT it is 3.1 per cent of employment and 1.3 per cent of total value added. You can see this is an industry that we should be good at. In fact, it is an industry at which we should excel because we have the national icons here. We have a great education system here. We have access to community arts facilities, and yet we languish. You only have to look at the international visitor figures in the year ending March 2015 to see that. It is only us and South Australia where visitor numbers go down. We had fewer international visitors in the year ending March this year than we did the previous year.
It is curious that inside the Chief Minister and economic development portfolio we are talking about business, we are talking about the economy, we are talking about industry, but one of our biggest industries is tourism and our international numbers are declining.
There is a trend. Tourism Research Australia says that continuing a trend which first emerged in 2013, visitors participating in arts and heritage activity increased strongly during the year. Remember this: arts and craft workshops and studios, up 26 per cent; heritage building sites or monuments, up 24 per cent; festivals, fairs and cultural events, up 20 per cent; botanic gardens, up 22 per cent. What does Canberra have lots of? Arts and craft workshops and studios, heritage buildings, sites and monuments, fairs, festivals and cultural events and we have the national botanic garden, but we declined. We declined because this government is not paying attention to the arts.
The document they have produced is an insult. The consultation finished in May. We asked during estimates when the consultation finished and it was in May. Most of this was already written, because it locks into the arts strategic plan. If you take the first five or six lines out of the arts strategic plan, it is what is reproduced in the arts policy framework. We have missed an opportunity, as this government misses so many opportunities. We are falling behind in an area where we should be incredibly strong because this is a government that is blind to our future and is blinkered by projects like capital metro. It cannot see case the wood for the trees, and it is a shame.
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