In case you didn’t realise Thursday 22 October was AusArts Day. This one day is, according to Creative Australia (The Australian Federal Governments Arts Funding Body) “a nationwide, sector-wide fundraising initiative designed to mobilise artists and arts organisations to raise funds for their work and creative ambitions on a single, powerful day”. So basically a day when the body responsible for funding the Arts in Australia asks everyone else to fund the projects that it can’t or won’t fund.
Having founded and co-edited an independent on-line literary and cultural journal (Rochford Street Review) for 25 years which has never received any assistance from the Federal, State or Local government arts funding bodies, the concept of AusArts Day brought to mind that great poster/t-shirt/ tea towel from the 1960 – 1980 “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need, and the Air Force has to hold a cake stall to buy a bomber.”
Creative Australia has effectively organised a list of arts projects it can’t/won’t fund and created a large cake stall market. Meanwhile the Australian government is handing over billions of dollars to an unstable US government for a number of nuclear submarines which we may never get and which probably fit the US strategic view of the world much better than that of Australia’s.
So nothing much has changed since the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom highlighted the the absurdity of defense budgets receiving massive state allocations while community-essential infrastructure such as health and education and the cultural activities that underlie the concept of being an Australian, or a human for that matter, are left to beg for charity.
At the end of the day there are some great projects in Creative Australia’s giant cake store – you can find them at https://creative.gov.au/ausartday-2026 – or you could could make independent Art/Writing happen by going to https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2026/10/22/this-ausartsday-support-rochford-street-review/ and paying the optional $10 cost for Issue 45 of Rochford Street Review. Even if you can’t afford the $10 you can still browse 25 years of independent reviews, launch speeches, articles, interviews, creative writing and visual arts.
And I look forward to the day when Richard Marles is forced to sell lamingtons outside a supermarket on Saturday morning to help fund a nuclear reactor for an AUKUS submarine.
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