Graham Adams: The Spinoff’s $10m taxpayer haul

NZ On Air’s records show 52 grants dating back to 2016.

Last week, Duncan Greive announced an urgent fund-raising drive as a do-or-die moment for the The Spinoff, which he founded in 2014. At the very least, unless enough money rolled in from readers, more staff would lose their jobs in addition to the few roles that had already been disestablished.

He and the two other senior staffers who signed the open letter identified The Spinoff’s three “main buckets” of revenue — advertising and commercial partnerships; readers’ contributions; and taxpayer funding. The buckets were leaking badly.

Mike Hosking: Creative New Zealand's week gets worse

Creative New Zealand having been stung badly for their behaviour this week.

Having been embarrassed by an embarrassed Prime Minister who went and usurped them for easy political points, they have "spoken out."

This is Shakespeare and the funding they rejected because of the "cannon of imperialism." First point, who speaks like that? The "cannon of imperialism?"

What condescending tosh.

Michael Bassett: Labour's Shakespeare moment

As a former Labour Minister of Arts and Culture I was shocked to hear that the Arts Council had decided to remove the annual subsidy to the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare festival for secondary school students. The sum of money involved ($31,000) isn’t massive. But the decision to cut the subsidy hits at a very significant secondary school cultural festival. The second biggest secondary school in the country, Mt Albert Grammar School, smack in the middle of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s electorate, has performed very well at these Sheilah Winn competitions, with several students, winning scholarships including recently an African international student at the school. The reasons advanced by Creative New Zealand for abolishing the grant related to some weird notion that Shakespeare is part of imperialism; that New Zealand should be “de-colonised”, and presumably that all students should be force-fed kapa haka and Te Ao Maori instead.

Bob Edlin: Creative NZ gives support to the art of pressing MPs to change “racist” law and facilitate race-based voting systems

Creative New Zealand – a generous supporter of  artistic projects it considers worthy – is supporting writing which promotes the contentious notion that the Treaty of Waitangi calls for race-based voting arrangements in local government.

Yes, this is the outfit that administers the Arts Continuity Grant, a Covid-19 response fund which came to the attention of the Taxpayers Union when it had paid out $16 million in grants to a variety of questionable short-term arts projects.