It is important to put into context the Deputy Premier and Nationals’ leader John Barilaro’s announcement of a $100 million Regional Cultural Fund for community halls, libraries, museums and art galleries.
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It is the same government that is providing $600 million to Sydney arts organisations like the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Theatre Company and the Art Gallery of NSW.
Yes, rural and regional areas are getting a sixth of what Sydney is receiving.
NSW Labor is calling on the NSW Nationals to revise the structure of its Regional Cultural Fund and expand it to include programs and staff – and not just the bricks and mortar.
The fund has a “dog-eat-dog” competitive nature – where the Nationals have pitted regional communities against each other in a desperate fight for funds in a rural and regional version of the Hunger Games.
While I welcome any funds for rural and regional communities, I am unable - in good conscience – to welcome this announcement. It is another cruel National Party trick.
In recent months, I have visited a range of art galleries across NSW and have spoken to curators, directors, staff and volunteers, including those in Broken Hill, Tamworth, Inverell, Orange, Bathurst, Cessnock, Grafton, Bega, Newcastle and the Margaret Olley Gallery in the Tweed.
They have world class spaces, but they need on-going funds for staff and to support their programs as well as cataloguing and digitalising their collections.
Sadly, under the Nationals, rural and regional families are not getting their fair share from the State Government – and this needs to change.
Shadow minister for the arts Walt Secord
State’s spending priorities ignore the environment
THE 2017 NSW Budget is a short-sighted joke for future generations who will be left with a cooked planet and a legacy of extinct species and degraded ecosystems.
It is typical of the government’s disregard for nature that the environment portfolio was largely overlooked in possibly the state’s biggest spending budget ever.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian had a chance to plot a path out of the climate change and energy quagmire, but she failed to rise to that challenge.
The government urgently needs a clean energy transition plan to make the state carbon neutral by 2050, but it still does not have one, and there was nothing for it in the budget.
Worse, it raided $240 million from the Climate Change Fund to pay for private land conservation in a pathetic attempt to justify its disastrous land clearing laws.
It’s all well and good to invest in kids’ sport, but what about a safe climate and their future?
James Tremain, communications manager, Nature Conservation Council of NSW
Generosity will help those who are doing it tough
THE Salvation Army would like to send a big thank you to the Australian public for its support of this year’s Red Shield Appeal.
There is great need in our community and the Salvos would not be able to give hope to Australians doing it tough without the overwhelming generosity of the public.
We are especially grateful to the thousands of volunteers who assisted us over the Red Shield Door Knock weekend.
