The arts community has applauded the dumping of George Brandis from the Arts Ministry and called on his replacement to "undo the damage" inflicted on the industry.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appointed Senator Mitch Fifield as Minister for Communications and Minister for Arts on Sunday.
It ends the controversial reign of Senator Brandis, who oversaw huge cuts to the Australia Council in favour of his own funding body.
"I think [Brandis] was a terrible Arts minister; I think history will show that clearly," said Nicole Beyer, co-convenor of ArtsPeak, the confederation of national peak arts organisations.
"With the new Arts Minister, we ultimately hope that he will see sense and return the funding taken from the Australia Council."
Senator Brandis announced cuts in this year's budget of more than $104 million over four years to the Australia Council, which allocates arts funding at an arm's length from government.
The money was to be funnelled into the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA), a new body administered by Senator Brandis' ministry, with grants signed off by him personally.
The move outraged many in the arts community, who said it removed objectivity and feared Senator Brandis' preferred arts groups – major ballet, symphony and opera companies – would be favoured at the expense of small and medium companies and individual artists.
A Senate inquiry is under way into the new body, which Labor has described as a "slush fund" and "private arts fiefdom".
Ms Beyer said the Senate inquiry had made clear that the shake-up was a mistake that had destabilised the industry and thrown many artists into turmoil, especially individual artists who are ineligible for NPEA funding.
She said the NPEA was not yet official operating, meaning it was not too late for Senator Fifield to abandon it and return funding to the Australia Council.
"Arm's length funding has been proven to be a really great way to ensure a broad range of art gets funded, not just what the minister of the day fancies," Ms Beyer, who is also the director of Theatre Network Victoria, said.
More than 350 prominent and emerging writers, including Nick Cave, best sellers Christos Tsiolkas and Hannah Kent, Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee and Miles Franklin award winner Michelle de Kretser had put their names to an open letter calling on Malcolm Turnbull to dump Senator Brandis and reverse his cuts.
The letter also decries the Book Council of Australia, which was established in December with $6 million from the Australia Council's operating budget – money the letter says should have gone to writers.
Sam Twyford-Moore, who wrote the open letter, said the Prime Minister had given the arts community a "big confidence boost" with the reshuffle.
"Hopefully Fifield will look at the NPEA and think that it's not worth administering," Twyford-Moore said.
"There are more arts workers in Australia than there are miners, and they can now really undo the damage Brandis did."
The writer and former Emerging Writers' Festival director applauded bringing the communications and arts portfolios under the one minister.
The Australia Council was hit with an additional $7.2 million in efficiency savings at the last budget, making a combined annual funding reduction to its $230 million budget of about 13 per cent.
Senator Brandis also oversaw a funding cut to Screen Australia, which supports new Australian films, of $3.6 million over the four years to 2019.
Senator Fifield, from Victoria, was previously the Assistant Minister for Social Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate.
