Australia Yearbook - 2001

Chapter 12—Culture and recreation 553
C10.2 GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF THE ARTS(a), By Artistic Purpose, Australia—Selected Years
1968–69 to 1988–89
1968–69(b) 1973–74 1980–81 1982–83 1988–89
$m % $m % $m % $m % $m %
Artistic purpose
Literature 0.1 2 2.1 8 2.0 4 4.0 6 7.8 6
Visual arts/craft 1.0 23 5.2 19 6.2 13 8.7 13 20.5 15
Music incl.
opera 1.1 26 10.7 39 14.5 31 18.2 28 25.0 18
Theatre, dance 1.9 44 7.2 26 15.2 32 20.7 32 50.1 36
Aboriginal arts — — 0.8 3 2.5 5 3.6 6 12.5 9
Community arts 0.2 5 1.6 6 7.0 15 10.2 16 23.2 17
Total 4.3 100 27.6 100 47.4 100 65.4 100 139.1 100
(a) Including Commonwealth, State and Territory and local government funding. Not including government expenditure on art
galleries, performing arts venues, symphony orchestras, or film and video. (b) Not including local government.
Source: Derived from data in Australia Council, The Arts: Some Australian Data (Sydney: Australia Council, 1982); Hans
Guldberg, Cultural Funding in Australia: Federal, State and Local Government (Sydney: Australia Council, 1991); and Hans
Guldberg, Artburst! Growth in Arts Demand and Supply over Two Decades (Sydney: Australia Council, 1992).
Turning to film, we may note that the impetus for
a public presence in reviving the Australian film
industry, which had begun in the late 1960s,
came to fruition during the period under review,
first with the establishment of the Australian Film
Development Corporation (AFDC) in 1970, and
then with the inclusion of a Film and Television
Board in the original Australia Council. The AFDC
was replaced in 1975 by the Australian Film
Commission (AFC) whose central function
remained that of encouraging the making,
promotion, distribution and exhibition of
Australian films. During the mid-1980s the
appropriation to support the AFC reached
around $20m, and it was earning back about half
this amount in revenues from its various projects.
By 1989–90 the government support was around
$16m, and the AFC’s earned revenue had fallen
away to little more than $3m.
In addition to supporting the AFC, the Federal
Government in 1978 introduced tax concessions
to encourage investment in Australian films, first
under Section 10B and then under the more
widely known Section 10BA of the Tax
Assessment Act. These measures were
complemented in 1988 with the establishment of
the Film Finance Corporation (FFC), set up as an
avenue for providing a more direct means of
government support for film investments. The
10BA arrangements in their initial form proved so
attractive to investors that by 1984–85, for
example, the total value of film budgets secured
through this means exceeded $180m, at a cost to
government revenue in the following year of
around $125m (or $225m at 1998–99 prices).
This level of indirect support for the film industry
was well in excess of the total amount of direct
support provided by the Federal
Government at that time for all the other arts
combined. 13
Modern times: 1990–2000
In 1985 the Cultural Ministers’ Council set up
a Statistical Advisory Group with
membership from the Commonwealth and
all States. In 1987 the Group commissioned a
study to develop a National Culture-Leisure
Industry Statistical Framework. The
framework was to be based on the 1986
UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics,
and was intended to enable the ABS to
rationalise and expand its collection of
cultural statistics in a manner consistent with
the statistical systems in use in other industry
sectors. 14 The reports of these studies
provided in due course a basis for compiling,
for the first time, a comprehensive statistical
picture of funding to the arts and culture in
Australia. 15 Thus we are able, in this third
stage of our coverage of public funding of
the arts in Australia, to call upon a reliable
data source to demonstrate developments
over the period. Implementation of the
statistical framework led to some
modifications and improvements introduced
over time, so in fact it is possible for present
purposes to trace a strictly consistent series
back only as far as 1994–95, although with
some further assumptions we can extend this
data set back to 1991–92.
Table C10.3 presents the broad aggregates
for the eight-year period 1991–92 to 1998–99.
The total levels of arts funding shown here
are considerably higher than those for the