Peter GarrettPolitician-turn-author and Midnight Oil vocalist Peter Garrett has labelled the federal arts funding system as elitist.
At a launch for his new memoir, Big Blue Sky, in Perth this morning, the former Minister for Environment and the Arts stated the federal budget’s allocation was “skewed” to support film, the heritage arts and regional projects.
“I don’t think that there’s any doubt that it’s elitist,” Garrett said.
“There was no underlining drive in the budget to increase the amount of creativity and opportunities for young Australians, other than if they were working with a ballet company and coming through as a choreography or dancer," he added, explaining his observations during him time as minister.
“What we wanted to do was alter the shape of that recurrent spending, and we started doing that and people didn’t like it. But for me, it was the most important thing we could do."
Garrett also briefly touched on the retraction made to his new memoir, in relation to a cash off from a representative of Clubs NSW.
“Media tends to look for conspiracy,” he said.
“Look, it’s one of those interesting things that you won’t expect will emerge, which is remembering something a certain way, writing a certain way, referring to it, internalising it, telling it and then someone else who was there comes along and says, ‘Hang on a minute, that part of the recollection is factually incorrect.’ It’s just been corrected, as the record would be.”
“You take responsibility, as an author, for all the errors and mistakes, and I took responsibly for mine.”
Big Blue Sky is out now.
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