"could I support an event funded by profits of mandatory detention...? My answer: emphatically no."

How about support for an event funded by profits of mandatory confiscations based on threat of mandatory detention - tax?

Bit of hypocrisy there?

"It is bureaucracy by privatised fiat."

The fiat is all governmental. The decision whether an asylum-seeker has refugee status is made by the PNG government whose case-officers are trained by Australian Immigration officers, not by Transfield.

Does that make it okay? What makes you think that is any less corrupt?

" In its response last Friday, members decided to side step the messiness of Manus and extol the sponsorship, soiled as it might be."

You raise a real issue about artists being sponsored by the rich and powerful.

But the same artists would love nothing better than a big bucket of money from the federal government, and we would hear no objection based on the feds' part in blowing up shepherds and bridal parties in Afghanistan then would we?

Binoy, I will watch with interest the comments section on this piece. Nothing quite as entertaining as watching an ethicist (is that a profession?) caught on the horns of a dilemma. Perhaps the yartists could approach the Medici family as co sponsors.

Hint: Could you find alternative expressions to 'tentacles' ? It's quite hackneyed and a dead giveaway, just a little more subtlety may keep a reader progressing through your turgid prose.

Binoy

I love your refusal to accept money from transfield.
I know a few drug dealers and criminals who pay taxes rates and charges to various Australian Governments.
My question. To be consistant should you now call on a boycott of income from Australian Governments until this practise stops?

one can justify any stupidity in order to confirm ones dogma. Does RMIT or yourself receive any Government money? Don't you realise Rudd/Gillard pig headedness lead to over 1000 drownings?

Excuse me, "a policy slammed by the UNHCR as inhumane and non-compliant with international law?"

WOW! They mustn't think much of their own Camps around the World well.

Australian Detention Camps are a damm side better than anything they provide to Refugees. Well, they would be if the Detainees would stop burning them down & destroying the facilities provided for them.

Show me a UNCHR Refugee Camp with TV, Sports facilities, proper bed off the ground, Hot & cold running water.

It's obvious you don't like G4S or Transfield. Who would you like to see running the Camps, Binoy. Maybe you would prefer various Islamic Groups, Maybe a coalition of Shia & Sunni groups. Would that suit you? Would you support a Festival run by such a group?

You forget that Labor was the biggest sponsor of all time of Transfield.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall as the luvvies wrestled with what we might loosely call their conscience.

And I do wonder if any of them dared to raise the obvious question, given that the detention centres are themselves reflective of government policy. Will they ask themselves...

"...could I support an event funded by the architects of mandatory detention"?

Will a band of braided and be-sandalled luvvies write to the Biennale Board in a similar vein to that which was prompted by Transfield, do you think...

"...we ask the Board: what will you do? We urge you to act in the interests of asylum seekers. As part of this we request the Biennale reject the offer from the Arts Council, and seek sponsorship elsewhere".

I seem to recall a warning notice that read "For your own safety and comfort, please do not stand between the artists and a bunch of money".

The hand-wringers wringing their hands over the death of the Iranian, or as they revealingly call themselves, Persians, country shopper while ignoring the callous indifference of the Greens [accidents happen] to the 100s of deaths from the corrupt Gillard and Rudd governments is sickening.

Can this revisionist masquerading as an historian go and shout on a street corner for a change?

For someone who sucks at the taxpayer teat, that is a bit rich.

I am just so sick of these children living off the taxpayer, & trying to lecture us, their funder, & boss from their ivory towers.

Binoy,

Why don't you and the other artists use your art to make your statements about problems with Transfield and detention centre victims?

Wow. Turns out I was wrong.

>>I seem to recall a warning notice that read "For your own safety and comfort, please do not stand between the artists and a bunch of money".<<

This time, they have stood upon their dignity, thumbed their noses at their sponsor's money, and shot themselves firmly in the foot.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/arts-kicks-own-goal-in-biennale-of-sydney-stoush-and-risks-vital-clash-20140308-34dzu.html

"In none of the statements by activists did they condemn Transfield's funding of the Australian Chamber Orchestra or the peak arts and disability organisation Accessible Arts. Nor did they condemn the links between Transfield board members who also sit on arts boards across the country providing their services, expertise and support. They include David Gonski, who is chairman of the Sydney Theatre Company, Guido Belgiorno-Nettis, who is president of the Art Gallery of NSW Trust, and Nicholas James, who is a director for Gondwana Choirs. If the activists really wanted to be consistent, they would have dug down a little deeper and protested these links. It would then be logical to also boycott companies that fund the Liberal-Nationals Coalition, which implements the detention policy. These companies include Santos, Woodside Energy, ANZ, Zip Industries, Macquarie Group, Herbert Smith Freehills and Westfield Group. They are also all active arts sponsors."

It isn't difficult to describe the scene in these companies' boardrooms, when the question "what should our Arts sponsorship budget look like this year?" is next tabled.

Amazing, the damage some petulant, jumped-up luvvie can do. I hope the arts communities affected by this pointless hissy-fit will take some retaliatory action. Meanwhile...

"All bets are off now and any arts manager in Australia looking for the sponsorship dollar should be pretty nervous."

All for the sake of some individuals' need to feel smugly self-righteous. How sad.

Pericles. ' Well said that man!'. The same could be said for the anti Isreali divestment luvvies. Close down companies in the disputed 'west bank' and throw hundreds of Palestinians out of work, include also the luvvies banning genetically modified crops such as 'golden rice', preventing thousands of third world children going blind through vitamin D deficiency. The list is endless. Ship them all to Tasmania I say.

I hope that the sanctimonious pricks that torpedoed the arts festival have to beg for positions at the next business funded event.

SM: I hope that the sanctimonious pricks that torpedoed the arts festival have to beg for positions at the next business funded event.

No he won't. The bigger disaster you cause the greater the acclaim as a hero of the Campus you get from Universities. Don't you know how it works? Don't you just love it when these people shoot them selves in the foot. But it'll be made out to be Transfield fault.