AMPAG welcomes new funding for major companies in 2007 Budget
From the AMPAG archive — restored from a May 2007 media release on the Howard Government’s final federal Budget allocation to the major performing arts companies.
AMPAG welcomed the 2007 federal Budget’s $25 million additional allocation to the Major Performing Arts Framework on its release in May 2007. The release framed the allocation as the most significant federal investment in the major performing arts sector since the 1999 Nugent Review and the introduction of the Major Performing Arts Framework that the Nugent Review had recommended. The 2007 Budget was the final Budget of the Howard Government before the November 2007 federal election that returned the Rudd Labor Government, and the AMPAG response noted that the funding boost had delivered on the multi-year campaign for indexation reform that the sector had been pursuing through the early 2000s.
What the Budget did
The Budget allocated $25 million across the forward estimates to the Major Performing Arts Framework, with the funds earmarked for a combination of direct base-funding indexation, expanded touring support through the Playing Australia programme, and contributions to the Australia Council’s small-to-medium sector that the major companies had advocated for as part of the broader sector-health agenda. The allocation was presented as a phased multi-year increase rather than a single-year top-up, which addressed the indexation-lag concerns that AMPAG had raised in successive Budget submissions through 2005 and 2006.
Why this matters in the longer arc
The 2007 Budget allocation was the high-water mark of bipartisan federal commitment to the Howard-era cultural funding framework. The 2008 Rudd Budget continued the funding trajectory; the 2009–2010 Rudd cultural reforms (which produced the National Cultural Policy that the 2013 Creative Australia document formalised) built on the 2007 base; the 2015 Brandis Catalyst Fund redirection unsettled the framework but did not undo the 2007 base allocation; and the 2023 Revive policy under the Albanese Government rebuilt the cultural-policy framework with the major performing arts sector funding largely preserved. The 2007 Budget thus represents an important continuity point in the long-run federal cultural funding line.
Original release: AMPAG (May 2007), “AMPAG welcomes new funding for major companies in 2007 Budget”. Restored from the AMPAG site Wayback Machine archive.
