Culture sores
Arts Minister Paul Fletcher. AAP Image / Mick Tsikas
Yesterday it was a record plunge in business confidence according to the NAB; today it’s the worst monthly drop in consumer confidence in 47 years, according to Westpac’s survey. Set aside the recent bull run on the local sharemarket, which even traders find unconvincing. The bad economic news is going to keep coming for a while, such as the International Monetary Fund’s forecasts overnight that Australia and the world will suffer this year a recession much worse than the GFC. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the IMF forecasts were “not surprising” and stressed it was also forecasting a strong bounce-back in 2021, including in Australia, where the stimulus spending is the second highest in the world as a proportion of GDP (after the US). Ahead of a conference call with his G20 counterparts tonight, Frydenberg said Australia’s message was consistent that supply chains should remain open and “the current crisis should not be seen as a cause for protectionism”.
Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers said the IMF forecasts were “incredibly confronting” given Australia was expected to take a bigger hit than other comparable countries. “The IMF doesn’t share the prime minister’s assumption that the Australian employment market will all of a sudden snap back to normal on his six-month deadline,” Chalmers said. With unemployment forecast to hit 8 per cent this year, and 9 per cent in 2021, Chalmers said “in crises like this typically unemployment rises much faster than it falls on the other side”, and the IMF clearly expected there would be a long tail of unemployment from the pandemic.
The federal government is in reactive mode with communications and arts minister Paul Fletcher today announcing a new media package, including a $50 million program for regional outlets – Producing Public Interest News Gathering (PING) – responding to recent closure announcements from AAP, Nine, News and (this week) ACM, as well as emergency suspension of local-content requirements on broadcasters to produce Australian drama, children’s programming and documentaries. Notably, roughly two-thirds of the PING money has been re-purposed from the pre-existing package for regional and small publishers – note who missed out. On local content, there will be an options paper on telling Australian stories. Fletcher told the ABC’s The World Today that this programming was simply “impossible” for broadcasters to produce under the current lockdown, and the emergency measures would extend across 2020 and be reviewed next year.
Greens communications and arts spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young told a webinar for The Australia Institute this morning that watering down the local content rules would have a sharp impact on local producers, and that while Fletcher had been listening to the arts and entertainment industry, “I’m not sure he’s heard what the sector actually needs”.
While there was talk of bailout for the airlines, universities and aged care, Hanson-Young said there had been little done for out-of-work artists and entertainers, and she would raise her concerns with Fletcher at a meeting tomorrow. “The moment those first lots of restrictions started coming out,” she said, “it was the arts and entertainment space that was smashed instantly – literally overnight – from gigs being organised to events being closed, cancelled, pubs closing their doors, and of course a whole season of activities that was going to be running from March through to August seemingly just wiped off the calendar. Across the board, it’s been very, very difficult for the industry and, despite that, we still haven’t seen an industry-specific package.”
Hanson-Young said the industry worked closely with the tourism and hospitality sectors but had not been looked after in the JobKeeper package because most artists and entertainers worked gig-to-gig and could not show 12 months’ service with a single employer.
The Australia Institute chief economist Richard Denniss said the arts was the first impacted by social-distancing laws – a friend in the industry told him, “I’m in the business of putting on non-discretionary events for more than 500 people” – and would be the last to come out of the lockdown.
Denniss said the arts industry is a very big employer and its economic contribution is constantly overlooked. “There’s 193,000 people [directly] employed in the creative-arts industry in Australia,” he said. “To put that into perspective, there’s less than 50,000 people work in coalmining. So, we’ve all heard these stories about how some industry is the backbone of the nation and they hold the economy aloft, well, they’re nonsense stories. Ironically the creative arts are probably worse at telling stories about themselves than the coalmine owners.”
On that point, in the most recent episode of their Weatherboard and Iron podcast, the Nationals renegades Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan wax lyrical about keeping the load-bearing sectors of the economy – such as the coalmines of the Hunter Valley and Central Queensland – working during the pandemic. Funny how coal wins the culture wars, while our culture loses them.
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