To be of assistance or not, it indeed is debatable if artists deserve and require funding by the government.  Firstly, I acknowledge that the benefits from artists and poets can enrich our everyday lives in so many different ways; otherwise our life would have been a lot drabber without them.    

Any genuine artist most certainly deserves some form of aid and there can not be any doubt about that, however, whether they require government assistance is another issue altogether.  Contrary to popular belief it seems to be that not all artists and literary personalities are wealthy, and most renowned personalities are deservedly rich and famous.    

While the other large group of artists is neither rich nor famous, they do continue to produce the art works as for the passion and often the passion is what drives them.  It would be ridiculous to think that any kind of financial incentives could power their creativity.  However, not many of them are able to take up their passion on a full time basis because they cannot afford to.  It is import to note that most creative artists are made, and were not born so.  It is the vagaries of life & struggles that they have to face which fuels their creativity, in the process they need to mature into renowned to be an artist or a writer.  When they do and when their work is recognized, there will not be any dearth of money or fame.  

In my opinion, it would be criminal to take away this very drive and shun their creativity.  Having said that, I do believe that they need to have some kind of incentives, it can be in the way of appreciation and opportunity to present their talent to the rest of the world.  This could be done in various ways, for instance, giving tax incentives to amateur artists and writers or financial rebates in government owned auditoriums to stage their presentations.    

In talking about artists in Australia, which has a concrete social security system in place to take care of all kinds of basic needs, any kind of added financial incentives are not only an added burden on the taxpayer.  It would be an issue to find out worthy beneficiaries and there will be enough crooks who will misuse any well intended government assistance schemes.   Every human being craves for recognition and money happens to be one of the means towards this end, however, as I mentioned in the beginning it is more important to acknowledge their work than provide financial assistance.    

On the other hand, as a Chinese, my perception of the government’s assistance is more questionable.  Firstly, we need to give artists a definition and how do you classify a person who is an artist.  In essence, calligraphy, poetry, music and art they all can be extended to a person who writes well, paints well in his/her Blog.  To extend this artist sense further, can we say a singer is an artist?  Well, there are many pop song and folk music singers in China.  In the same way, a dancer, a talk show’s talent, a movie star, the director, the photographer they can all be artists.  And this number of artists would add up to whole population of Australia.  How could the Chinese government provide any assistance without any discrimination to those artists in every classification?  I personally do not believe our government has enough financial ability to accommodate this wide ganging number of artists.   

As a Chinese I can see that in my country, there is still a big gap between the poor and the rich, I would rather government’s financial assistance be directed toward the poor, this does not mean that I would think to provide assistance to artists is a waste of money.  My point is that while we can give a true definition of artists, government should use our taxes in a way to be more accountable for.