So, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the last few weeks regarding the LNP Australian Budget for 2014, where we have seen savage cuts to education, healthcare, pensions, unemployment benefits, deregulation of university fees, family payments, higher education loan schemes, indigenous programs… you name it – anything that might be deemed a necessary public service has been ravaged or in the case of Medicare, had a ‘co-payment’ ie: levy/fee/tax, applied to it.
Then we started seeing things in the news like the Prime Minister’s daughter getting a $60,000 scholarship to a prestigious design school that has never been published, never taken applicants and was supposedly awarded on merit. Things like the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, protesting university fees back in 1989. And now a crazy arsed $1M grant for the Australian Ballet School to purchase a $4.7M mansion to use for it’s boarders.
What the actual fuck, LNP Govt? There’s supposed to be a BUDGET EMERGENCY going on, how can we be giving away even $1M measly to a ballet school? So I did what I did with most of my political rage – to spare my actual friends on Facebook, I tend to spew most of it forth on Twitter to a bunch of like-minded strangers.
I didn’t really mean to pick a fight with the Board of the Australian Ballet this afternoon, but… oh well.
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Budget help for ballet Australian Ballet School’s new $4.7m mansion
The $4.7 million mansion in Parkville that has been purchased with the help of $1 million of taxpayer money.
It is one of Melbourne’s grand mansions – a sprawling century-old stately home that will be a new boarding school for Australia’s aspiring ballerinas – and it has just been purchased with $1 million of taxpayer money granted under Joe Hockey’s tough budget.
More than a few eyebrows were raised when young ballerinas emerged as rare winners on budget night, especially after the federal Treasurer declared, ”The age of entitlement is over.” Tucked away in the budget papers was a $1 million grant for the Australian Ballet School, to help with its purchase of a new boarding residence. Armed with that taxpayer money, the school has spent more than $4.7 million on a mansion.
Set on a 2025-square-metre allotment, the Queen Anne mansion in Parkville boasts sweeping parkland views of the Royal Park Golf Course, a pool and gardens. According to Jellis Craig Kensington estate agents, the mansion is one of Melbourne’s ”last grand residences”.
”Exquisite period detail and soaring ceilings showcase gracious formal rooms and heritage splendour,” said the estate agent. Whether ballerinas are lifters or leaners is a matter for debate, but the Ballet School seems to have been given a lift while many other arts institutions took a cut – more than $87 million of cuts over the next four years.
Screen Australia was cut by $25.1 million, while the Australia Council lost $28.2 million.
Just how the Ballet School came to be a beneficiary amid the cuts remains a mystery, but already many in Canberra – including some within the Liberal Party – are pointing out that it’s often not what you know, but who you know. On the board of the Australian Ballet School is Daniele Kemp, the high-profile wife of former Liberal arts minister Rod Kemp, a predecessor of George Brandis as arts minister. Mr Kemp is now the chairman of the Institute of Public Affairs, a right-wing lobby group.
Mr Kemp and Mr Brandis are said to speak regularly, but Ms Kemp on Tuesday denied that she had any private discussions with the Arts Minister about the $1 million grant. ”We [the ballet school] applied for the grant, and we met with Mr Brandis as a board,” Ms Kemp said. ”He [Brandis] did come to Melbourne to visit and meet with us, but I was just one board member at that meeting.”
A senior Liberal told Fairfax Media the timing of the purchase ”does not good look” as cabinet tried to sell its tough budget. ”This school is pretty much a creche for some rich kids in [the seats of] Higgins, Melbourne Ports and Goldstein, and it had enough cash to come up with more than $3.5 million on its own. I admit, it doesn’t look good,” the source said. It will take substantial renovations to turn the six-bedroom home into a boarding residence capable of housing 28 students.
Mr Brandis confirmed he visited the school in February and the decision ”is another clear indication of the Coalition’s support for the arts even when facing such challenges with the budget”.
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That’s fucked. Liberals’ girls dance in circles around old aged pensioners weeping over the loss of concessions.