New Matilda contributor Ben Eltham has claimed budget cuts to the Australia Council were payback for the artist boycott of the 2014 Sydney Biennale over sponsor Transfield’s role running offshore detention centres, The Australian reports today.

“Not only had artists shown themselves to be motivated by an animus against government policy — and there was no more treasured policy of the Abbott government than the mandatory offshore detention of asylum seekers — but also against the values of the market itself,” the Oz quotes Eltham as saying in a paper published by Currency House.