Tuesday, 12 August 2025

Arts funding

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:50): (1808) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Creative Industries, and the action I seek is that more long-term investment be provided to our wonderful arts organisations in Victoria, which do such excellent, acclaimed work, often with never enough funding. I had a wonderful evening recently at the launch of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra’s 2026 season on behalf of my Greens colleagues, particularly Ellen Sandell MP, the Greens member for Melbourne. I would like to thank the whole MCO team and all of the amazing musicians for making it such a terrific event. The Melbourne Chamber Orchestra describe themselves as tiny yet very mighty, and it is quite clear given the scale of the ensemble in terms of the number of people involved, and yet the calibre of their performances is so top-notch, putting on over 50 performances each season. What an absolutely outstanding achievement, and power to you all in your upcoming season.

A shout-out I would like to also give is to La Mama, a fabulous home for theatre in our community that has been operating for over 50 years, but due to endless grant application processes and the loss of a significant funding stream, they are having to completely rethink how they are delivering theatre to our community. La Mama brings so much to Melbourne, yet they seem to have to fight every few years just to stay alive, and that should not be the case. They enrich our city so much and should be offered secure ongoing funding to allow them the space and the certainty to focus their attention on what they do best, which is facilitating raw, radical and relevant theatre to people in our state.

The arts are what makes our community, Melbourne itself, the vibrant place it is, so we should properly fund them, not just through short grants but in the long term.