‘Post’-pandemic, the arts sector is both exhausted and animated by a new sense of perspective that leaves many unwilling to put up with these former practices or the way things ‘have always been done’. This includes a new interrogation of the unseen labour of arts funding processes: the expectations on applicants and the pressure on advisors and peers.

Arts scandals over the theme of sexual reproduction vary in their details, but there are similarities in that the undercurrent of feeling displayed by decision-makers sometimes breaks through the procedural surface of the discussion – or where it stays under wraps, as is the case with the Australia Council’s decision to rescind, it circulates beneath the official language as an electrified absence.

'Simultaneously thriving and tenuous, Australia’s literary ecosystem is the ultimate alignment of ‘unmet need’ and ‘unfunded excellence’ ... We are all gaps and all excellence. We are all hole and no plot.'

Island has a distinct focus arising from where it is published, and it continues to publish, champion and develop Tasmanian writing and ideas. But the magazine has been defunded by Arts Tasmania, and it will suspend publishing if extra support isn’t forthcoming.

On the same day that the Morrison government announced they were giving $500 million to defence so they can buy bigger guns (part of a $3 billion increase to the department), I learned that Overland was not invited to renew its four-year funding from federal arts body the Australia Council.

Literature is especially endangered right now: the arts have been underfunded by successive governments, and literature has always received, in the words of Stephen Murray-Smith, the least ‘superphosphate’.