One hundred departments (including selected agencies and authorities) across the three levels of government are identified as investing in cultural and creative activities in the 2020–21 cultural funding by governments survey.

This striking figure – which represents four more departments than in 2019–20 – suggests that the three levels of government recognise the diverse roles played by cultural and creative activity across their portfolios and in Australia’s economic, social, environmental and cultural vitality. ANA’s third report in our Big Picture series of research recommends changes that will make these various departments’ investments more transparent and coordinated.

More broadly, this report provides an updated overview of trends in arts and culture expenditure by governments in Australia between the years of 2007–08 and 2020–21. The research draws on a new release of Australia’s most comprehensive dataset on this topic, the cultural funding by governments series (CFG). This report also explores the opportunities for change based on the CFG survey of agencies and its administratively collected data as well as cross-country comparisons produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Australia is still spending less as a share of GDP on recreation, culture and religion compared to most of its OECD peers, ranking 23rd of 31 OECD countries in 2020 in this internationally comparable area of government spending. The report notes that this evidence raises further questions rather than clear answers, including about the global role of governments in stimulating and underpinning arts and culture alongside other sources of direct and indirect investment.

Key findings:

• Since the start of the pandemic, governments have directed $12.5 billion to cultural and creative industries in response to COVID-19, in the form of targeted COVID-19 support and wider economy COVID-19 support.
• Capital expenditure has slowly but steadily increased as a share of non-COVID-19 expenditure on arts and culture in Australia. Capital expenditure represented 17% of non-COVID-19 expenditure on arts and culture during 2020–21, significantly up from 11% in 2007–08, though slightly down on the 18% recorded in 2017–18.
• In 2020–21, Museums, Libraries, Archives and Heritage accounted for 38% of government expenditure on arts and culture (including targeted COVID-19 support and excluding local government spending). Arts accounted for 32%; Film, Radio and Television accounted for 30%. The long-term decrease in the share of this expenditure on the Film, Radio and Television category continues.