Photo by Daniel Munoz via The Conversation
Australian governments at all three levels have always had complex relationships with the arts and how they relate to Australian culture.
In 1819, for example, Governor Macquarie appointed the colony of New South Wales’s first “poet laureate”, Michael Massey Robinson. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Robinson was the recipient of the colony’s first arts grant that consisted of “two cows from the government herd”. Robinson’s excitement was short-lived as a change of government and the appointment of a new governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, saw the support quickly end.
