Songwriter, author, and national treasure Nick Cave has joined a call to remove George Brandis as Minister for the Arts. Cave is one of a number of writers calling on newly minted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to give Brandis the sack.
As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, Cave is the most prominent of a group of 263 writers to sign an open letter also protesting the leadership of the Book Council of Australia, a peak advocacy body announced by former prime minister Tony Abbott in December.
“Many truly gifted Australian writers are struggling, writers of vision and vitality,” Cave writes. “This need not be the case. Writers, like other artists, are the lifeblood of a nation, those bold few who dare reflect us back to ourselves, in all our beautiful ignobility.”
“Prime Minister Turnbull, if you are truly, as you claim to be, an agent of democracy, I implore you: heed this petition.” Other signatories include Christos Tsiolkas, Hannah Kent, book critic Geordie Williamson, and Miles Franklin award winner Michelle de Kretser.
As Tone Deaf previously reported, the 2015 federal budget included a measure that saw $104 million diverted from the Australia Council, who act as the government’s arts funding and advisory body, to a new National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, overseen by Sen Brandis.
Tone Deaf later noted the impact that many in the arts industry believe the significant cuts will have on the sector, with Crikey publishing a list of the 145 arts companies that have been gutted as a result of the cuts, including events such as the Queensland Music Festival.
The cuts follow a previous controversy which surfaced late last year, after Sen Brandis awarded a grant of $275,000 to for-profit classical record company Melba Recordings, despite the lack of a proper funding round or open application process to the grant which they received.
Australia’s arts community severely criticised the cuts, calling them “disastrous”. Former Australia Council member Rodney Hall said the council’s aim was to ensure “public money” doesn’t “get into the hands of a very few people dishing it out to their friends”.
