A recent call for an overhaul of the Australia Council misses the real culprit. If Australian cultural policy is in disarray, it is not the Australia Council that is at fault; it is the Department for Water, Heritage and the Arts.
In a recent think piece for the Centre for Policy Development, bloggers Marcus Westbury and Ben Eltham call for changes and improvements to Australian cultural policy (Cultural policy in Australia). Their main recommendations are that the government needs to formalise its cultural policy making, take a holistic, or ‘whole of government’ approach to cultural policy, employ a more up-to-date concept of culture, and employ a wider range of policy ‘instruments’ to support culture (such as tax incentives, new regulations, etc.).
