Last week many were outraged when government funds, via the Australian Council of the Arts, were used to finance the reviewers writing for the newspaper lift-out, the Australian's Review of Books.
Among those criticising the move were smaller review magazines which are able to pay nothing like the funding of $1 per word (the rumoured amount) subsidising Rupert Murdoch's Australian.
Most people believe that Australia Council for the Arts funding should be given to develop new and existing artistic talent, not for a publication produced by one of the wealthier and more influential media magnates.
Green Left Weekly has no such backing, and we survive due to the generosity of our readers, subscribers and supporters. Our weekly Cultural Dissent section reviews books, plays, music and films, and promotes the talents of a wide range of progressive artists and writers. It promotes those whose cultural expression is generally left out of the establishment media, including women, Aboriginal people, young people and migrants.
The Cultural Dissent Alternative Culture Fund sponsors these pages, but to be able to do this relies of donations from those who support alternative cultural expression. Your donation to Cultural Dissent will enable us to keep presenting and reviewing the myriad of progressive cultural events and ideas, and will add to the breadth of the green and left movements. Donations to Cultural Dissent of $2 or more are tax deductible and can be sent c/- PO Box 394, Broadway NSW 2007.
Through its pages, Green Left gives a cultural as well as a political voice to those whose voices are rarely heard. Green Left Weekly -- it's your paper.
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