The big chunks go to broadcasting with $132 million and sport and recreation with $84 million. High performance sport gets just over 69% of that -- high performance art, not so much. Museums (including art museums) get a fair whack at $53 million. Then there's feeding our national war obsession that's going to cost us $21 million. Presumably this will include the salary of ex Te Papa CE now Special Adviser on Military Heritage Michael Houlihan. There’s also nearly $8 million to write about wars gone by and other history stuff.
OK we have finally arrived at the arts, well Performing Arts anyway. They get $20 million while something called Arts and Film gets $21. We assume these are the two halves of Creative NZ’s funding.
Then it’s Heritage NZ with $13.5 million, Gen Admin and Policy $6 million, Film $4.1 million, Maori $360,000 and Cultural Diplomacy $220,000. Of the last two, Maori took a 72 percent hit on Protecting Taonga and the art diplomacy people who brought you Te Papa's Oceania exhibition a few years ago were slashed 69 percent.
Meanwhile the Australia Council (their Creative NZ) has been cut $30.5 million over four years in their budget announcement. That’s $10.4 million for the first year and about $6.5 million for the following three.
Image: cake cutter
