One for the Chardonnay/latte sippers.

Well, we sure do things convincingly here in Qld. The former government was bundled out of power a couple of weeks ago in an astonishing show of democratic will by the voters in the Sunshine State. After twenty years or so, the government led by Premier Anna Bligh (the first elected female premier in Austrlia, no less) discovered that they weren't universally loved, indeed, they were hardly loved at all, and it was time to go.

The statistics will now show that the new Liberal National Party is the most "mandated" government in Australia's history. That is to say, more people voted to have the LNP as their government than any other government in this wide brown land, than ever before.That is convincing, and good on 'em.

One of the LNP's key pre-election messages was about "reducing government waste", and that clearly rang some bells with voters. So now we're told that an early initiative to do that is the abolish the Qld Premiers Literary Awards programme, which will save the State approx. $230,000 (+ some change). All over the blogosphere and twitterverse (d'ya like those new fangled words kids?) the commentary has started. Well, here's some more.

The Awards seem to have started back in around 1999, under the Beattie Labor government, and have provided awards in a diverse range of areas to do with literature and writing. For those who can be bothered to think about it, here's the list of recently abolished categories:
  

·         Fiction Book Award

·         Emerging Queensland Author—Manuscript Award

·         Unpublished Indigenous Writer—Arts Queensland David Unaipon Award

·         Non-Fiction Book Award

·         History Book—Faculty of Arts, University of Queensland Award

·         Children's Book—Mary Ryan's Award

·         Young Adult Book Award

·         Science Writer Award

·         Poetry Collection—Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award

·         Australian Short Story Collection—Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award

·         Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate—The Harry Williams Award

·         Film Script—Screen Queensland Award

·         Television Script—QUT Creative Industries Award

·         Drama Script (Stage)—Griffith University Creative Writing Program Award , and

·         Encouragement and Development Prize

In the interests of disclosure, let me say, I quite like to read. Doesn't happen nearly often enough, you know, reading for reading's sake, but I do like it. And as I read back over that list, there's not one category which I would gladly remove from a programme of awards designed to nurture, encourage and develop new writing. Part of me would like to think that the new government felt just as torn when they decided to axe the programme.


Trouble is, I think its more likely that in the euphoria of an election victory, against the backdrop of "cutting costs", the LNP has fallen into the trap of taking the knife to one of the least offensive, and probably least likely to defend itself, sectors of the community. I reckon most people don't think about writers (or most artists generally) much at all, and those that do make it onto the public's radar are the blockbuster, best sellers, and surely they don't need support or encouraging anyway?


If the government (any government) is serious about improving our society, then communication, expression, storytelling, art and culture all have to be front of mind. Withdrawing funding from one of the important crucibles in which these things develop can't logically be a good way to do that. As (moderately successful) writer Nick Earls has already opined, the amount we're saving here wouldn't buy a new bus stop. I notice today that has also been announced that the government is reviewing the expenditure on corporate boxes at sporting events. It will be interesting to see how the people who will be affected by those cuts respond.


Could it be that this is seen as a way of showing that its not just the "yartz" which will  get its funding cut?  Doubt it.