Arts and Culture

I move:

That this House notes that:

(1) the 2024-25 budget provided significant new investment in Australia's arts and cultural sector, including:

(a) $115.2 million over four years to support the long-term financial sustainability of the national arts training organisations and $36.4 million of indexed and ongoing funding from 2028-29 (including the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Australian Film, Television and Radio School, NAISDA Dance College, Flying Fruit Fly Circus, Australian Ballet School, National Institute of Circus Arts, Australian National Academy of Music and the Australian Youth Orchestra);

(b) $14.5 million to support the production of Australian children's screen content, recognising the importance of Australian children seeing themselves reflected in the stories they watch;

(c) $9.3 million to expand and enhance the National Film and Sound Archive's capacity to digitise audio-visual materials at risk of irreversible degradation; and

(d) $5.2 million to expand and develop the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and Darwin Symphony Orchestra;

(2) these investments sustain the momentum that the national cultural policy, Revive has created in rebuilding Australia's cultural sector and safeguarding our cultural heritage; and

(3) the Government is delivering transformative new investment to the cultural sector after a decade of neglect and cuts by the previous Government.

I'm really to support the Albanese government's third budget, which sustains the momentum we built in reviving Australia's cultural sector and implementing our National Cultural Policy. Australia's eight national arts training organisations are essential to the development of a skilled and innovative creative workforce in Australia. This group, known as the ARTS8, includes the Australian Ballet School, the Australian Film Television and Radio School, the Australian National Academy of Music, the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, NAISDA Dance College and the National Institute of Circus Arts as well as NIDA. NIDA and AFTRS alumni have, between them, received 16 Academy Awards, including actors Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving, costume designer Catherine Martin and directors Gillian Armstrong, Warwick Thornton, Phillip Noyce and Jane Campion. The eight schools nurture the talent and build the capacity of the next generation of artists and arts workers.

I was lucky enough to attend a performance by students from each of these institutions at an annual collaboration event not long ago, and I was astonished at what these talented young creatives are capable of. They're people who'll tell our stories on stage and screen for decades to come. The future vitality of our cultural life depends on their imagination and skill. But, sadly, the future of these organisations was left in doubt by the previous government. When we came to government, we recognised that there was a real crisis. Funding for the ARTS8 organisations had declined in real terms. After a decade of wilful neglect, a number of these schools were left at risk of collapse. That's not something that we could allow to happen. I'm particularly proud that the budget provided $115.2 million over the next four years to the ARTS8, with $36.4 million in indexed, ongoing annual funding following that.

Another important organisation that is the treasure of our audiovisual heritage is the National Film and Sound Archive. Its collection reflects our cultural identity, our creativity and our technical achievements. It cares for everything from the 1930s newsreels and vinyl records to digital games and VHS tapes of our best loved soaps. Many of its records are fragile and deteriorating rapidly; many of them are unique and irreplaceable. If they're lost, they're lost forever. Nitrate based film and images are particularly at risk, and the NFSA is in a race against time to digitise them. Some of the defining moments of our history are captured in this medium, including the earliest moving images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from as early as 1898; the world's first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, from 1906; film of troops embarking for deployment during the First World War; and the bodyline cricket matches.

The NFSA also provides storage for other national cultural institutions. Under the previous government, the NFSA was not adequately resourced to care for these priceless treasures. The 2024-25 budget provided $9.3 million over four years to upgrade facilities for the storage and preservation of nitrate film and images. This will double storage capacity and ensure the preservation of nitrate film and photographs for future generations to access. This investment builds on the $34 million over four years for the NFSA that was allocated in the previous budget as part of a half-a-billion-dollar support package delivered by the Albanese government to rescue our national cultural institutions from the financial crisis the previous government abandoned them to, which had put collections, jobs and our cultural heritage at risk.

The budget continues our commitments in Revive to First Nations languages. Before colonisation more than 250 First Nation languages were spoken in Australia. Sadly, fewer than that number are still spoken today as a direct result of past government policies to suppress them. Australia has one of the highest rates of language loss worldwide. We want to ensure First Nations languages are spoken for generations to come, so we're investing $53.8 million in the preservation and teaching of First Nation languages. There are many other key areas but these are some of our most important.