Carving in Snow

This week the Australia Council allocated more annual fund ing to small-to-medium arts organisations than ever before. Yes, you heard right. In announcing $28 million to go to these organisations each year, it invested more, not less, in operational, multi-year funding than it had in recent years. This funding round saw more of a realignment of support than a reduction. Here are the figures: 2009-10 2010–11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 To Key Orgs $21.2m $22.1m $21.4m $21.1m $22.8m $23.1m Total Funding $163.5 $163.8 164.5 174.8 199.2 191.5 It remains unclear, though, what other programs will be available to complement this multi-year funding, if any. In the past, a good variety have been available to organisations both with and without operational funding. It will be important to see how many of these, and indeed others available to individual arti...

One of the driving beliefs of the 2015 Federal Budget is that small businesses are well placed to energise the national economy. They are strong of arm and ready to 'have a go', as the language of the budget has it.  The budget certainly helps them to get moving. If a small business has an annual turnover of less than $2 million, from now until 30 June 2017 there’s an immediate tax deduction for every item purchased up to $20,000 (the threshold used to be $1000). Cars and vans, kitchens, machinery, computers... anything under $20,000 bought for that business is instantly 100% tax deductible. There is more: the company tax for these businesses is cut from 30% to 28.5% - the lowest small business tax rate in more than 50 years - and there’s a fringe benefits tax discount on mobile electronics. All in all, it’s a $5 billion boost to GDP over two years. Quite an adrenaline hit for the economy. This is the opposite of ‘trickle-down economics’ – the idea that econo...