$250m Arts Funding Package: Ausdance responds

8 July 2020

The Hon. Paul Fletcher MP
Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

Dear Minister Fletcher,

$250m arts, entertainment & screen industry package: Maximising investments in the dance sector for rebooting Australia’s creative economy

Ausdance National recognises that whole-of-economy support and assistance measures are necessary to restart Australia’s economy and secure sustainability for the future.

The association welcomes the $250m arts, entertainment and screen industry package announced by the Prime Minister last week. Financial investment to stimulate and support businesses in the dance sector is necessary to restart activities and build their long-term sustainability.

For dance businesses with access to the resources provided through this support package, it will assist in saving jobs and driving job creation as the sector rebuilds from the impact of COVID-19. 

However, Ausdance National and its professional network* across the nation have identified that further tailored support measures are needed to enable the full scope of dance businesses to return to work, and to do so efficiently. 

We reiterate that reforms to current support measures can maximise job saving and job creation in the dance sector, and reduce the burden on the Federal Budget.

  • Currently, sole traders who run micro dance businesses, along with other smaller dance businesses, are being left without the necessary means to successfully carry out their business activities. JobKeeper supports individual jobs, but resources are also needed to support the multifarious projects those workers undertake.
  • Employers in the dance sector are seeing business productivity and profitability affected. They are being forced to prioritise giving shifts to casuals who have been employed by their businesses for 12 months or more, whether or not they are relevant to ongoing business needs. 
  • Employers cannot support their other casuals left without JobKeeper. As a result, they are finding that they are unable to retain and support uniquely skilled casual staff who provide the specific expertise required because they work on short-term contracts across multiple businesses. 
  • Freelance dance professionals, without any safety net, are struggling to remain in an industry in which they provide an essential element. A large majority of these workers have been omitted from JobKeeper because they have not worked for one employer for the length of time deemed necessary to meet eligibility criteria, yet as workers who have been consistently engaged by multiple employers in the 12-month period prior to COVID-19 they may have earned too much to meet JobSeeker eligibility. 
  • The business activities carried out by casual freelance professionals, and micro and small dance businesses, fulfil integral roles that support the business activities of the ‘sector significant organisations’ the Government has already identified. These are activities the ‘sector significant organisations’ are not positioned to undertake, but which are necessary to ensure effective, productive functioning of the dance ecology. 

Unless outputs from the whole dance sector are maximised, many interacting or benefiting arts and non-arts business economies will be negatively affected. These include but are not limited to: 

  • Disability and regional sectors
  • Mental health initiatives
  • Physical health management
  • Creative capacity building
  • Tourism and hospitality sectors

Consideration must also be given to:

  • Enhanced tax incentives to motivate private giving and investment in artworks and industry development.
  • Removal of the efficiency dividend.
  • Specific support for innovation. 
  • Relief for lease holders in both government-owned and private tenancies.
  • Investment in a public campaign to rebuild confidence in the dance and arts sectors.

Australia is without a Federal Government arts policy. Endorsement and meaningful support of First Nations arts and cultural activity must be central to a new arts policy to preserve First Nations cultural knowledge and storytelling, and ensure the safety of First Nations Peoples. Without them we have no future. Policy at this level needs to provide clear vision to achieve recognised goals of national importance. 

With this knowledge, and with the goal of supporting the dance sector to secure future sustainability within the creative economy, Ausdance urgently requests governments to: 

  • Expand JobKeeper eligibility criteria to include casual freelance dance professionals employed on short-term contracts who have worked consistently in the 12 months prior to COVID-19, but who have had multiple employers. 
  • Provide employers in the dance sector the flexibility to determine levels of JobKeeper pay equal to the casual employment contract suitable for project work.
  • Extend JobKeeper beyond September to support dance businesses (including sole traders) who face ongoing disruption and impact on sustainability due to COVID-19. 
  • Add direct financial investment to the current package to include support for restarting business activities (including generating live performance outcomes) for micro and small dance businesses. This means prioritising further continued support to rebuild the dance sector – part of the greater arts industry that employs more than 645,000 Australians and is so severely impacted by COVID-19. 
  • Increase funding to the Australia Council for the Arts. Dance is severely under-resourced at present, and it must be enabled to rebuild its programs of innovative performance, its contribution to health and wellbeing, and its ongoing development of the sector as part of the solution to COVID-19 recovery.
  • Invest in development of a national arts policy through consultation with the arts sector that recognises and acknowledges First Nations Arts and Culture, with custodians providing direction and leadership in the shaping (and decolonising) of our cultural context and frame. 
  • Continue to engage with dance sector representatives, including Ausdance and BlakDance, to inform equitable and relevant policies of support and assistance for the whole dance sector. 

Ausdance National is confident that implementation of these measures will maximise the return on taxpayer-funded investment by enabling a highly skilled and innovative dance workforce to help facilitate rebooting Australia’s creative economy. Dance businesses help stimulate the economy beyond the creative sector, by contributing to the health, wellbeing and vibrancy of Australian communities, thereby helping to drive the regeneration of the broader Australian economy. 

We look forward to your response to these suggestions, and to your further support of Australia’s vibrant, highly-skilled and diverse dance sector.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Summers, Ausdance National President

c.c. The Hon. Scott Morrison, Prime Minister

*Ausdance network:

  • Ausdance NSW
  • Ausdance Victoria
  • Ausdance Qld
  • Ausdance ACT
  • Ausdance SA
  • Ausdance WA