Australians For Artistic Freedom

George Brandis ‘HeARTless’ posters now a collector’s item

The writing was on the wall (pun intended).

 

As the fury over his unilateral cuts to the Australia Council showed no signs of diminishing, Arts Minister George Brandis is one of the major victims of new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Cabinet reshuffle.

Brandis was dumped from the portfolio on 20 September, just as posters like the one above began appearing in capital cities up the east coast.

And it’s no wonder. Brandis has single-handedly managed to get a large section of the arts community offside by robbing the independent Australia Council for the Arts of $105 million and establishing a new organisation, the National Program for Excellence in the Arts.

This sparked a massive outpouring of anger with more than 12,300 people signing our petition and well over 2260 submissions to the Senate inquiry into the cuts.

Read more in this excellent summary by Matthew Westwood of The Australian.

What the dumping of Brandis means is that we now have a couple of thousand freshly printed posters like the one above that have suddenlly become collector's items. If you want one, drop into the MEAA offices in Sydney or Melbourne during business hours. They are located at:

  • Sydney: 245 Chalmers Street, Redfern
  • Melbourne: Level 3, 365 Queen Street, Melbourne

The new Arts Minister is Senator Mitch Fifield from Victoria. He has been very guarded in his initial comments but the opportunity exists for him to begin rebuilding bridges with the arts community by reversing these brutal cuts.

Make sure he gets the message by sending an email to Senator Fifield today.