The artistic director of the Sydney Festival Wesley Enoch does not shy away from controversy. So it’s no surprise he’s rattling cages with his views on artists accepting money from sponsors with unpalatable policies.

Take the money, he advises. Then use it to create work that expresses your opposition.

“I’m quite compromised a lot in the jobs I’ve done because you’re constantly looking for clean money. You are constantly looking for money that has no stigma attached to it and that comes from the joyous valuing of life,” he says.

“And I don’t think that exists. What you do with it is the most important thing.”

The CEO of the Biennale of Sydney, Barbara Moore, shares his view.

“If an arts organisation takes the position of determining right from wrong in a binary system, we’re not going to have very much art funding left,” she says, pragmatically.

Rather than focusing on the differences, arts organisations should be looking at where their values align and what they can achieve together, she says. Where there is dissent, an event such as the biennale should be a “safe space” to have a difficult discussion about it.

What these two cultural leaders are saying is that artists who feel ethically compromised by accepting money from governments or companies with whom they disagree may be missing a greater opportunity to be heard.

Enoch says his job is to articulate his own values and then let others make their decisions about whether they will sponsor the organisations he leads. However, the sponsorship has to be at “arm’s length”, he says.

“My job is to articulate my values and let others make their decisions. If that means sometimes biting the hand that feeds you, then so be it,” he says.

Enoch says he has a “very complex” relationship with governments, which are major sponsors of the arts, but also promulgate policies he disagrees with – such as mandatory sentencing and offshore detention centres.

“Do I take the money from governments? Yes. Do they stop me from speaking against them? No. And that’s the big thing for me.”

Enoch says he uses the same framework for corporate sponsorships and philanthropy. “They have to support me in doing what I’m doing.”

In 2014, the Biennale of Sydney was hit by a sponsorship crisis when it lost its principal funder, Transfield Holdings – the private company of the Belgiorno-Nettis family. The family, which founded and funded the biennale for 41 years, withdrew from the event after artists threatened a boycott over the role Transfield Services played as a contractor for Australia’s network of immigration detention centres.

At the time, the family-owned Transfield Holdings was a shareholder of facilities manager Transfield Services. It has since sold out its interest in the company.

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, stepped down as chair of the biennale, even though the contract for the detention centres was awarded two years after he and his brother Guido had stepped down as directors of Transfield Services. They had stopped being directors in 2012, and the contract was awarded in 2014 – the same year as the biennale.

The family company sold out its 11.3 per cent shareholding in Transfield Services after the controversy and Spanish company, Ferrovial, became the new owner of Transfield Services (now called Broadspectrum) in 2016 and announced it was withdrawing from its involvement in detention centres.

Moore, who was head of benefaction (philanthropy) at the time, says it was a difficult time for the family, which she indicates had views on the issue that were more aligned to those of the artists than the protesters may have realised.

But only a couple of weeks away from the biennale’s opening, that aspect of the issue was lost in the “static”.

“We were caught off guard in a media storm,” she says.

The controversy, although painful at the time, did not have an impact on the future of the event. After a government review that confirmed the cultural importance of the biennale, the Neilson Foundation stepped in to take over principal sponsorship and now 45 per cent of the funding comes from three levels of government, with the remainder coming from private philanthropic sources.

“Actually, it has made us stronger because it was a moment for us to pull back and remember what our core values are,” says Moore.

Moore says she regrets that the Transfield controversy ended the partnership and was not used, instead, as an opportunity to engage artists and others around the issue of detention centres.

“We would absolutely take Transfield on as a partner again,” she says.

Gambling addict, David Harris, made a sincere attempt to put himself out of harm’s way. Owing $27,000 on three credit cards, he turned down an offer to increase his credit limit and informed the bank about his addiction.

Eleven days later, the bank offered him yet another increase.

Harris, a roofer by trade, borrowed $35,000 from his boss to repay his debts and the two of them went into a bank branch to close his account, but were told they had to talk to the bank by phone. When they called, they were told to visit a branch.

He cut up his credit card, but then later applied for another and quickly ran up a gambling debt of around the same amount. During all of this, he had been “peppered” with numerous unsolicited offers to increase his credit limit.

By the time Harris’ case was detailed in the Banking and Financial Services Royal Commission last year, his bank (the Commonwealth Bank) had already acted to restrict credit increases and credit card offers where problem gambling is identified.

Today, the bank has a Financial Assist Sensitive Matters team to provide financial assistance and guidance. Customers can also ask for a “gambling and cash block” to be put on their credit card to try to stop transactions that may be used for gambling.

However, at the time of  Harris’ disclosure of his addiction to the bank in 2016, there were no processes in place pass that information to the parts of the bank assessing the creditworthiness of its customers.

The bank had not just enabled Harris to use borrowed money for gambling. By putting continual temptation into his path, it was also making it virtually impossible for an addict to stop.

Helping problem gamblers help themselves

Since the Royal Commission handed down its final report in February, other banks have also stepped up to help problem gamblers help themselves. The Bank of Queensland, Citibank and the Bendigo Bank have banned the use of credit cards for online betting.

In July, Macquarie Bank became the first of the larger banks to block credit card transactions for nights out at a casino, lottery tickets, sports betting and online gambling. The card will be declined regardless of whether the user has a problem with gambling. Macquarie has also capped cash advances at $1000.

Some banks offer customers the option to block their credit cards (with a 48-hour cooling-off period) and turn off credit card use for online transactions.

While those lobbying for safeguards have applauded these measures, there are inevitable counter-claims that they impinge on people’s freedom of choice.

The CEO of the peak body for financial counsellors in Australia, Financial Counselling Australia, Fiona Guthrie, says that efforts to put in safeguards are always met with the same protests.

“We get that argument all the time: that gambling is not illegal and so people have choices,” she says.

“The unspoken reason is that they would lose market share. They would not make as much money.”

“But, for me, it is like wearing seatbelts – making sure we don’t do things that are harmful. And the idea that you would borrow money and use it for gambling is clearly got to be a harmful practise.”

Choice is ‘moot’ when you are an addict

While some may argue that banks do not have the right to interfere in personal spending choices, Guthrie demurs, saying that banks have always decided what purposes are suitable for the credit they provide.

“Commercial organisations make decisions all the time about who they will engage with, who they will sell to and how they will sell and on what terms.”

Financial Counselling Australia director of policy and campaigns, Lauren Levin, says “Freedom of choice” becomes moot when someone is in the grip of an addiction: “They are not like everyone else”.

CBA executive general manager for retail, Clive van Horen, spoke about the freedom of choice argument in the Royal Commission when asked if his bank could identify whether people who apply for credit limit increases are spending large amounts on entertainment, takeaway food, alcohol, tobacco or gambling.

Van Horen replied: “With limits, yes we can. Ought we to? That’s a question of interpreting the guidelines”.

“The challenge we have as a bank is gambling is legal and, therefore, the choice – choice we’ve grappled with – is at what point do we say it’s not okay for an adult to choose how much to spend on different activities?

“You can quickly see the slippery slope that puts us on if we say ‘you can’t spend on gambling’.  Well, then, what about other addictive spending on shopping or on alcohol or any other causes?  This is what we’ve grappled with.

“Absent any clear legal or regulatory guideline, how do we determine when we intervene and impose limits?”

Lump-sum payments are also at risk

Levin argues that “doing nothing” is not a neutral position: “It comes with a really significant cost”, she says, pointing to the personal fallout from problem gambling.

Aside from the use of credit for gambling, the government and finance sector also need to turn their attention to the preservation of lump-sum payments and the proliferation of “payday lenders”, she says.

People who receive a lump sum of superannuation money or compensation for illness or accident are also vulnerable to blowing the lot on gambling, especially if they are in chronic pain, on heavy medication or suffer a mental illness such as depression.

Levin says people can transfer any amount of their own money into a gambling account without restriction. She remembers one man lost $500,000 compensation money in four months.

“People using their own money are desperate for tools that could help them not be damaged at a time when they are particularly vulnerable.” Levin says she would like to see banks provide a safe place to preserve the lump sum and a product that offers an income stream to those who have a problem with gambling.

Guthrie says she would like the Government to enact the recommendations from the review of Small Amount Credit Contracts (payday loans), including the proposal to cap repayments on these products to 10 per cent of a consumer’s net income per pay cycle.

“This would prevent over-commitment,” says Guthrie.

While the use of payday loans is common for problem gamblers, it is also true that regular payments to gambling sites is a “red flag” in terms of risk and is one of the top reasons for the rejection of a payday loan application.

Online payday lenders often promise money in your bank account within an hour of approval. They offer amounts of up to $2,000 with a contract term of between 16 days and 12 months and, in some cases, charge more than 400 per cent for payday loans and 800 per cent for consumer leases.

According to constitutional lawyer and activist Shireen Morris, 40 per cent of people who get a payday loan are unemployed, one-quarter get more than 50 per cent of their income from Centrelink, and the average number of loans per borrower is 3.64.

“One case study of loans taken out by Centrelink recipients showed a $700 washing machine ended up costing $2176, a $345 dryer ended up costing $3042 and a $498 fridge ended up costing $1690,” she wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.