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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Kelly Burke

‘A national scandal’: Australian authors take aim at ‘woefully underfunded’ literary sector

Richard Flanagan, Helen Garner and Kate Grenville.
The national cultural policy received 1200 public submissions, including from some of Australia’s most high-profile authors. Composite: Darren James

Australian literature’s standing as the most underfunded art form in the country is “a national scandal”, according to one of Australia’s leading writers.

The treatment by successive governments of Australian writers rates among the worst in the developed democratic world, according to Booker-prize winner Richard Flanagan. The literary sector, he said, should secede from the Australia Council, which is the federal government’s peak funding and advisory body for the arts.

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