From the AMPAG archive — restored from the original media release of March 2013, when the Gillard Government released its National Cultural Policy Creative Australia.
AMPAG welcomed the federal Government’s National Cultural Policy Creative Australia on its release in March 2013, calling it the most significant articulation of national cultural policy since Creative Nation in 1994 and noting that it created the funding and policy certainty the major performing arts companies had been seeking for the previous five years.
The policy committed the Government to a sustained funding framework for the major performing arts sector, formalised the role of the major companies as anchor cultural institutions, and articulated a national policy commitment to artistic excellence, diversity, indigenous arts, and access for regional and remote audiences. AMPAG’s then-CEO Sue Donnelly said at the time that the policy “removes the most significant uncertainty hanging over our companies — that the funding framework that has supported them since 1999 is itself supported by Government”.
What the policy did for the majors
The policy preserved the Major Performing Arts Framework — the funding mechanism that had supported the major companies since the 1999 Nugent Review — and confirmed that future funding adjustments to that framework would be triennial and indexed to a sector-specific cost index rather than CPI alone. This was the long-running advocacy ask AMPAG had been making for the previous decade. The policy also committed to maintaining federal/state matched funding ratios, which underpinned the financial position of the state-based companies (Queensland Theatre, Black Swan State Theatre, State Theatre Company SA, etc.).
Why this matters in the longer arc
Read in 2026 hindsight, the Creative Australia policy is the high-water mark of bipartisan federal commitment to the major performing arts sector. The 2015 Brandis Catalyst Fund redirection redirected $105 million from the Australia Council to a Minister-controlled fund and unsettled the framework Creative Australia had stabilised; the 2016 Senate Inquiry recommendations partially restored the position; and the 2023 announcement of Revive — A Place for Every Story, A Story for Every Place rebuilt the cultural policy framework from the ground up under different assumptions, including the rebranding of the Australia Council as Creative Australia.
Original release: AMPAG (March 2013), “National Cultural Policy creates certainty for majors”. Restored from the AMPAG site Wayback Machine archive.
