Tasmania Cuts Arts and Disability Support Positions in the Name of a Balanced Budget; Future of Local Interest-Free Art Purchase Scheme Uncertain

Among the AUD 1.5 billion in savings the state government is pushing departments to deliver to help Treasurer Eric Abetz balance the budget, one of Tasmania's most iconic arts support programs, the COLLECT art acquisition scheme, has arrived at a crossroads. According to ABC News Australia, the restructuring of Arts Tasmania will eliminate 250 jobs, including the position responsible for managing COLLECT, as well as a number of staff handling grant programs.

COLLECT has been running since 2009 and has sold more than 6,700 works by Tasmanian artists, with a combined value of AUD 22 million. The scheme offers consumers an interest-free loan of up to AUD 8,000 for the purchase of locally produced art, repayable within 12 months. It also charges a 1.5% administrative fee on sales, meaning that most of its operating costs are already recouped through that fee.

Independent painter Farida Cameron told the ABC that the COLLECT channel accounts for roughly 50% of her artwork sales. She warned that if the scheme were scrapped, it would amount to cutting half her income. Printmaker Mandy Reynard likewise said that works sold through COLLECT represent around half of her total sales.

Handmark Gallery proprietor Alana Dopson pointed out that the government's staffing logic directly contradicts the program's own fiscal logic. "It's not costing the government much to do this. It could absolutely continue," she said, questioning how the scheme could keep operating if the staff responsible for organising it were cut. Gallery co-director Emma Betten added that COLLECT is the only such scheme run by a state government anywhere in Australia, that other states have long been "very envious" of it, and that it is particularly effective for younger collectors, sparing them from putting art purchases on their credit cards.

The cuts are not confined to the arts. According to ABC News Australia, the Department of Education's inclusion practice team, which supports children with disabilities, also faces staffing reductions. Yet, eight days before the cuts were announced, Education Minister Jo Palmer's office told the ABC in clear terms: "No proposal to reduce staffing numbers has been put forward."

Regarding the fate of COLLECT, a spokesperson for the state's former Department of State Growth (now Building Tasmania) stated that "no proposal to discontinue COLLECT has been put forward," while at the same time acknowledging that the position overseeing the scheme would be cut, a statement that leaves an obvious policy void: if the role is gone, who will continue to run an acquisition program worth AUD 22 million that has sold a cumulative 6,700 works, nobody can say.

Greens deputy leader and arts spokesperson Vickie Bailey, responding to the ABC, was blunt: "It is patently obvious this government does not value the arts industry, despite the enormous contribution it makes to our economy, our communities, our sense of place, and where we sit in the world." She also stressed that the scheme produces spillover effects up and down the supply chain, for framers, transporters and others.

Beyond COLLECT, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery itself is facing job cuts affecting a world-renowned lichen researcher, the curator of the herbarium, as well as positions including a librarian, a graphic designer, a photographer and a senior exhibitions curator. When an art acquisition scheme that is almost self-funding, a team that supports children with disabilities, and core museum research positions are all placed on the chopping block together, the cost of so-called "budget repair" is quietly being shifted off the state government's balance sheet and onto the everyday lives of artists, collectors, and the families of children with disabilities.