‘Almost two months after the arts community discovered that A$104.7 million had been hived off the Australia Council’s budget and redirected to a new National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA), the draft funding guidelines have finally been released. Bearing in mind that the Australia Council’s first response to the sudden reduction in its budget was to suspend six-year funding for arts organisations as well as cancelling its June funding round, this announcement can hardly be described as premature.’ (Joanna Mendelssohn, The Conversation, 2.7.15)