snip go the shears: it’s ‘hooroo’ to the Premier’s Literary Award
The Arts always go first. When warning bells of plans to cut public funding are sounded, creative souls go running for cover, knowing their projects will likely be the first to suffer the chop.
Yet the Premier’s Literary Award for Queensland is an odd choice as the opening victim for (likely) two successive terms of LNP public sector cuts. Wouldn’t you rather start your savings campaign with a bang? Why not fire some of the public servants from defunct areas of government, that’s always worth a few votes at the polls (not that the LNP needs them). No trimming the fat from the most gluttonous areas of public spending in Newman’s opening two weeks. Nope, we’d rather cull the literary bird entirely (and during the National Year of Reading no less).
But $250 000? Is that it?
Let’s see what else we could get for the miserly sum. A quarter of a mill is equivalent to 0.03% of the money contributed by taxpayers to the empty Clem 7 tunnel or 1.55 metres of desolate road.
It’s clearly overspending in the Arts that’s drained Queensland’s surplus. Installation artists, contemporary dancers, experimental musicians—the whole modernist gamut!—are running the state into the ground with their excessive spending of public money on abstract interpretations of the human condition.
‘But the Arts always kick up a stink when their funding is cut!’ you may protest. Well, dear reader, that’s because the euphemistic funding ‘cut’ is a funding ‘cull’ for projects that are seriously underfunded from the beginning.
‘But he’s already pledged six million for the Arts, including three million for regional areas,’ you continue. ‘Why shouldn’t the money be used in more productive ways to promote literature than a prize awarded to a select few writers who don’t even need to live in the state?’
Firstly, as anyone working in seriously underfunded or not-for-profit areas will attest, such government spending packages usually get divvied up between the hoards of organizations applying. A lack of consistent funding limits the type of project such grants can be used for. It’s hard to create something sustainable when you’re not sure if the money will be there in two years time.
Secondly, of course there are limitations to the use of competitions to promote literature. Yet if the goal is the promotion of literacy and the recognition of the importance of literature to our culture, then the funds saved from axing the Award should be reassigned to a more appropriate way of achieving this aim. The LNP made a commitment during the state campaign that the Arts would not be defunded in ‘real terms’. As Kate Eltham from the Queensland Writers Centre said, ‘if we’re seeing a cut to the Premier’s Literary Awards we’d really like to see how the new government might be using that money to support emerging writers in other areas.’
A few commentators in the Arts are happy to see the Award go. Author Shane Maloney, Australia’s resident writer of gritty political crime novels, defended the move in a comment on an article in The Australian — a surprising position considering his books are always keen to dig up the dirt on festering political conflicts. Those in the Arts condemning Newman’s action are not naïve to the limitations of the Award. Competitions, especially those funded by the government, often produce particularly bad versions of the very thing they’re trying to prop up. Claims of bias and protestations against the prize being given to writers outside of Queensland are not new criticisms. The outrage over Newman’s decision is due to the symbolic value of the Award to the so-called ‘Smart State’ and, more importantly, the fact that it comes in the wake of several years of Lord Mayor Newman stripping Brisbane City Council money from arts initiatives and earlier battles with former Arts Minister, Anna Bligh.
Competitions are part of the literary landscape, whether the product at the end warrants the prize or not. The list of past winners suggests they often do. Queensland now has the shameful title of being one of the few Australian states or territories without a literary award.
You can sign the petition calling for the reinstatement of the Premier’s Literary Award here.
By Rebekah Oldfield
