Idealogues in tha house

so this happened today ...

@geofflmon

and so some artists did this ...

@BenEltham

 ... as the Feds ripped a heap of money out of the Australia Council and put it, um, somewhere else vague and called a National Program of Excellence for the Arts. As the minister in charge puts it, "Arts funding has until now been limited almost exclusively to projects favoured by the Australia Council." That's the mob who decide, in a peer-review system independent of any government interference, who gets what coin.

Now the Arts Minister gets to administer the new program himself ... but until Brandis gets his muppet act together, everything has stalled. Those of us who have spent quite a bit of time preparing submissions for arts grants and gathering letters of support (read: prostrating thyself for critical judgement as opposed to pulling out weeds for cash, and around the country, estimated to be worth about 50,000 arts workers' hours) were sent an email today effectively saying, "Sorry guys. Withdraw your applications. Cuts effective immediately."