AUSTRALIA
Official Country Name COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
Languages ENGLISH
Population 23,470,145
Median Age 38.8
GDP Per Capita US $50,400
Source: CIA World Factbook
Total Value of Art Exported (UN Comtrade Database 2018) US $83,851,806
Arts Funding (Arts and Cultural Heritage) US $973,800,000
Art Programs (University Level) 27
Student Enrollment 9,356
Source: TheTreasury, Department of Education and Training, AAP (non-official)
Museums Exhibiting Contemporary Art 129
Contemporary Art Galleries (Commercial) 222
Contemporary Art Spaces (Nonprofit) 137
Art Foundations (NGO + Private) 132
Source: AAP (non-official)
Acknowledgments: Cherie McNair, Adam Porter, Nur Shkembi
Following years of drought in eastern Australia, brush fires raged across North South Wales and Queensland, blanketing populous coastal areas, including greater Sydney, in smoke for weeks. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeatedly denied a link between climate change and the devastating fire season.
On December 5, Morrison announced that, effective January 1, 2020, the Department of Communications and the Arts would be subsumed into the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, and Communications. After an outcry from the arts sector, federal arts minister Paul Fletcher denied that the department would be abolished, saying there would be no impact on the sector. Yet Australia remains without a national cultural policy since 2013’s short-lived Creative Australia, launched by former federal arts minister Simon Crean in the final months of Julia Gillard’s prime ministership.
The arts in Australia reflect the population’s rich Indigenous, colonial, and migrant histories, as well as the regional contexts of each state and territory. The federal governmental arts-funding and advisory body, the , currently administers funding and advocates for organizations and individual artists. It invested AUD 212 million (USD 145 million) in the arts in 2018–19. In addition, regional states have their own arts-funding bodies. New South Wales enjoys the greatest, distributes a total of AUD 60 million (USD 40.6 million) directly to artists and cultural programs.
