Opera Gets Biggest Slice of Australia Council funding

An analysis of Australia cultural funding through national arts funding body, the Australia Council, suggests that opera is the mostly highly backed of all art forms.
Arts commentator Marcus Westbury has highlighted that the $18.3 million grant that Opera Australia receives is more than the Australia Council's entire competitive funds for literature ($4.2 million), music ($3.6 million), theatre ($2.5 million), dance ($1.8 million) visual arts ($4.8 million) and inter-arts or cross-artform projects ($800,000) combined.
As Westbury explains âdespite recent scare campaigns that have suggested that Australia was somehow in the throes of doing away with the âheritage artsâ in favour of ânew mediaâ there doesnât appear to be much evidence of (this) in the numbers.�?
Westbury highlights that there is a âmassive discrepancy�? between the amounts of money that go into the major performing arts and how much goes into everything else combined.
Westbury is a long time critic of public funding for opera, suggesting it is a type of âupper class welfare�?.

http://www.marcuswestbury.net