Cultural funding and participation—National overview

Since 1994-95, the Australian Bureau of Statistics have produced estimates of public funding of arts and cultural activities for the three levels of government in Australia. In 2014, the Australian and state and territory governments started to jointly fund the Australian Bureau of Statistics to deploy the Cultural Funding by Government Survey. The survey reports recurrent and capital expenditure across the 3 tiers of government against two categories: Arts and Heritage.

2023-24 Highlights

In 2023-24, the estimate of total expenditure on cultural activities, funded by the three tiers of government, was $8,607.9m, comprising:
- $3,113.6m (36.2% of total) from the Australian Government
- $3,336.5m (38.8%) from state and territory governments
- $2,157.8m (25.1%) from local governments.
Total expenditure rose 3.5% (or $290.4m) in 2023-24 from 2021–22. Expenditure increased for state and territory government and Local government (↑0.3% and ↑18.1% respectively) but decreased for Australian Government (↓1.6%).
- Total recurrent expenditure rose by 2.1% ($141.1m).
- Total capital expenditure rose by 10.4% ($149.3m)
  - 57.6% ($916.7m) of capital expenditure was funded by state and territory governments.

Australian Government results

In 2023-24, Australian Government cultural expenditure was $3,113.6m comprising:
- $2,768.5m in recurrent expenditure
  - This figure rose by 1.3% ($35.7m)
- $345.1m in capital expenditure
  - This figure decreased by 20.2% ($87.3m)
Comparative figures between FY 21-22 and FY 23-24 are affected by COVID funding in FY 21-22 and driven by the timing of funding allocations for the multi-year Australian War Memorial Redevelopment Project. Excluding these factors, overall expenditure for the Australian Government rose by 10.5% ($294.3m).

Source: ABS Cultural Funding by Government and Cultural Funding by Government departmental submissions (2021-22 and 2023-24)

Data resources

Comprehensive data on government cultural funding, and cultural participation, and the complete data set of Cultural Funding by Government survey results.