A new report has revealed worrying signs in long-term investment trends in the arts, finding that Australia is in the bottom third of OECD nations for government spending on arts and culture, and that spending per capita has dropped over the past decade.

The report, titled The Big Picture 2: Public Expenditure on Artistic, Cultural and Creative activity in Australia in 2007-08 to 2019-20, was prepared by A New Approach (ANA), which describes itself as “Australia’s leading arts and culture think tank”.

It examines data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics to analyse spending on arts and culture at all three levels of government in Australia since 2007, as well as looking at the various programs and measures undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its findings are stark.

In the 2019–20 financial year, Australia’s three levels of government spent $11.58 billion of public funds on arts and culture, representing 1.46 per cent of the total expenditure across all levels of government. However, that figure includes $4.27 billion of COVID-specific measures; without that, total government expenditure on arts and culture drops to $7.26 billion, or a mere 0.9 per cent of combined total expenditure.

This figure includes funding given to organisations such as the ABC and...