Budget delays for arts

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34130, 17 April 1976, Page 7

Budget delays for arts

(From Our Own Reporter') WELLINGTON

All beneficiaries of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grants have to cope each year with the problems of late grants. This year the problem may he worse than usual if the 1976 Budget is delayed from June to July, as has been suggested.

The Arts Council does not know what its own budget will be until after the Budget, so the beneficiaries have to plan in the hone that they will get the same amount as the previous year.

A number have altered their financial year to run from January to December so that they have funds available from the previous year’s grant, but this does not wholly overcome the problem, and in any case is not possible for all' arts organisations.

The council’s chairman (Mr H. H. C. Keith) described the situation as “fairly unsatisfactory” and said the council would like funding to be over a three-year period so that the beneficiaries were better able to plan their activities.

“We have constantly asked successive Governments to do this in the past, and are organising another approach now, but we have never got anywhere,” he said. “It is very difficult for the arts in New Zealand to progress under these circumstances.”

Sponsorship.—A meeting in Sydney of representatives of 70 sporting organisations has decided that sponsorship by tobacco companies is “vital” to the continued organisation of sport in Australia. The meeting was called by Sydney sports groups after a statement bv the Federal Minister for Health (Mr Ralph Hunt) that Federal and State Health Ministers would be looking at tobacco sponsorships as part of a wider move to restrict all cigarette advertising.