Opposition arts spokesman Brandis saw the election as Medici versus Philistines in his speech to the Western Sydney Arts Forum.on Monday.
It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to join you at the Western Sydney Arts Forum. I know, from that part of this morning’s proceedings that I have heard, that your principal focus is, of course, the arts in Western Sydney and I will say something about that in the course of these remarks. But I do want to take this opportunity to range more broadly across arts policy and to offer a few observations on the values and attitudes which, were we to be elected on September 7, would shape the approach of a Coalition government to arts policy. I am particularly pleased to be giving this speech here, because western Sydney is emblematic of the creativity, the diversity and the broad community engagement which should be a defining feature of arts policy but which, alas, has not been sufficiently in evidence in arts policy and arts funding decisions in the recent past.
I understand that my Labor opposite number, Mr Tony Burke, has already addressed you earlier this morning. I am sorry not to have been able to be here to hear his speech but I have read an account of it online. I know that, during an election campaign, politicians under pressure are sometimes given to telling lies but a claim made in by Mr Burke this morning in relation to the Coalition and in relation to my preserving ministerial discretion and ministerial intervention in arts funding decisions, if the reports are correct, must go down as being, even by the low standards of election campaigning, as a spectacularly brazen lie. I understand that Mr Burke claimed that, when the current Australia Council Act was in the form of a bill before the Senate, I moved an amendment on behalf of the Opposition, the effect of which would have been to allow the Minister to interfere with funding decisions. No such amendment was moved, proposed, or even thought of. The basis of the old Australia Council Act and the new Australia Council Act for arms-length funding is section 12(2) of the current Act. It had a different number in the old Act but the words are unchanged between the two Acts. Those words are, and I’ll quote them to you:
‘The Minister must not give a direction in relation to the making of decision by the Council in a particular case relating to the provision of support, including provision of financial assistance or a guarantee.’
Those statutory words are, and always have been, the basis, as I say, of the Australia Council’s arms-length relationship with government. Not only was that provision not the subject of an amendment by the Opposition but when I made a speech in the Senate at which I outlined the Opposition’s approach to the bill, I made it specifically and unambiguously clear that the Opposition strongly supported that provision. How anyone could claim to the contrary is beyond me.
Now, I understand Mr Burke, predictably, offered some honeyed words about the current Government’s exciting plans for the sector. But all the rhetoric in the world can mask the fact that arts policy under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Governments has been a sorry story of indifference, of confusion, of lack of focus and of lost opportunities. Mr Burke is, let us remember, the third Arts Minister in the past 3 years.
I do want to spend most of this speech talking about what a Coalition Government would do but I don’t think one can allow the opportunity to pass without offering a critique of the past six years.
The first Arts Minster of the Labor Governments, Peter Garrett, for whom – coming, as he did, from the sector – high hopes were held, was notoriously inaccessible. His focus was limited to a very narrow range of genres within a very broad portfolio: principally contemporary music, which I suppose is understandable, and aboriginal art. Important though those are, they are but a small proportion of the vast range of creative activity within the sector.
Mr Garrett was followed in the portfolio by Mr Simon Crean, whose commitment to the sector was, in my opinion, genuine and who could, in my view, have become a great Arts Minister if the Labor Party had given him half a chance. But alas, it was not to be. It was Mr Crean’s fate to sit in a Cabinet dominated politicians for whom the best that could be hoped for from the sector was indifference. Better that than outright hostility, which was, for so many of them, the default position: politicians for whom the arts sector had the whiff of dangerous elitism – yet another set of enemies in the class war. I could not help but feel sorry for Simon Crean when, at a function to mark the 40th anniversary of the Australia Council earlier this year, he lamented, with obvious exasperation, the difference between the attitude to arts funding in the Whitlam Government, in which his father had served as Treasurer, and the Labor Government in which he himself served. Then, I suppose if the purse-strings are held by a Treasurer for whom the embodiment of high culture is Bruce Springsteen, we can hardly be surprised. It was Simon Crean’s tragedy that he released the National Cultural Policy a matter of weeks before he fell victim to the fratricidal wars of the ALP, and that the document he ultimately released, although more than 5 years in gestation, was but a shadow of what had been promised in the discussion paper eighteen months earlier.
I do not want to focus too much on the negatives, but it is a simple truth – uncontroverted by all but the most one-eyed partisan – that arts policy has been neglected in the period of this government. And the most basic reason for this neglect has been that there have been hardly and ministers in the Government who took the slightest interest. Importantly, neither of the politicians who served as Prime Minister during this period – Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard – showed even the remotest interest, while the man who was Treasurer for the entire length of the government until a few weeks ago, Mr Wayne Swan, is as determined a philistine as you would ever meet, and proud to be so.
The differences in the attitude towards the arts between the recent Labor Government, and a future Coalition government, will start with the people who are actually sitting around the Cabinet table, which is, as those who are wise in the ways of politics well know, the most important thing of all.
The senior members of a future Coalition Cabinet will include Julie Bishop, a dedicated arts patron in Perth for many years and an active supporter of many of that city’s great cultural institutions; Malcolm Turnbull, who has, with his wife Lucy, been not just a dedicated arts patron in this city, but a benefactor of the arts, for a very long time: as close to a Medician figure as Australian politics will accommodate. It will include – importantly, as Treasurer and hence the man who holds the purse strings – Joe Hockey, a great friend of and enthusiast for the Australian film industry; Andrew Robb, who with his wife Maureen has long been an active arts patron in Melbourne; Christopher Pyne, who has had a lifelong association with the arts community of Adelaide; and me – I have been a member of the Brisbane arts public all of my adult life.
And lest you think that there is a notable omission from that list, let me lastly mention Tony Abbott – more renowned, of course, as a sportsman – who is steeped in, and has a deeper knowledge of, one of the great art forms than almost anyone else in Parliament: that is, literature. As becomes his Jesuit and Oxford education, Tony Abbott is more widely read in the great classics than almost anyone else in the House of Representatives.
Of course, one does not decide arts policy by a head-count. But my simple point is that, one would find around the Cabinet table of a Coalition Government many more people who genuinely care about the arts, and are ambitious for their place in Australian life, than one would ever find in either the current Labor Government, or any Labor Opposition of the foreseeable future.
And when decisions have to be made, and priorities ordered, the most important single thing is who sits around the table. So of one thing we may be sure: a future Coalition government will not comprise Ministers who are largely indifferent to, suspicious of, or ignorant of, the arts. But the absence of indifference is not of itself a value.
What, then, will be the values which a Coalition Government will bring to arts policy? Our approach will be based on six key principles: excellence, integrity, artistic freedom, self-confidence, sustainability and accessibility. Let tell you what I mean by each of those things.
Excellence
The first of those values which will shape a future Coalition Government is excellence. The Coalition views the arts as one of the principal arenas in which Australians strive for and achieve excellence; the pursuit of excellence across all of the artistic genres will be the central value of cultural policy under a Coalition Government. One of the besetting failures of Australia’s cultural policy has been an obsessive concern to avoid being seen as “elitist”. Of course, the arts should be accessible to all Australians – an issue to which I will return. However arts policy – and public money invested in the arts – have too often rewarded inwardness, mediocrity and political correctness, in the name of avoiding the elitist tag. As I said earlier, there has been more than a whiff of that attitude in the approach of the current Labor Government, particularly during its ‘class war’ phase.
Those who shape our arts policy – whether they are arts practitioners, arts administrators or the officials who make funding decisions – should never be afraid of promoting artistic excellence for fear of offending that reductionist view of culture. In truth, the identification of the celebration of excellence with the defence of elitism is both self-limiting and ignorant. A nation which can boast some of the great artists, arts companies and arts administrators of the world should not be self-conscious or embarrassed about embracing excellence as a core value of our cultural policy.
Integrity
The second value which will shape a Coalition Government’s approach is artistic integrity. The biggest philosophical difference between the approach of the Labor Government and the approach which I, as Arts Minister, would take is the debate about means and ends. Under this Government, the arts are treated as means to an end: the work of artists is seen as a vehicle for pursuing other political and social goals. That was a key message of the National Cultural Policy – although, I must say, more explicitly expressed in the Discussion Paper than in the eventual document. According to this approach, cultural policy is subjugated to other areas of public policy – for instance, communications policy, as evidenced by the National Broadband Network; education policy, or even tourism. I do not, for a moment, doubt that there are important synergies between cultural policy and other areas of public policy. I do not doubt that a thriving cultural sector enhances other socially beneficial activities. But I warn, in the strongest terms, against making cultural policy – and, therefore, the arts sector – mendicant to other public sector priorities. That approach means that arts policy lacks integrity and cohesion, and that the creative work of artists is not valued for its own sake – as something intrinsically good in itself.
The Coalition, on the other hand, sees the work of artists and arts professionals as something which is intrinsically worthwhile, one of the essential elements of a confident and sophisticated society, which is to be judged on its own merits – not by whether it serves some other political or public policy agenda. I know that the “art for art’s sake” argument is a very old one – it has been going on for as long as aesthetics has been recognised as a sub-discipline of philosophy. I, myself, reject what I see as the current Government’s instrumentalist approach to the arts: that public support for the sector is only to be justified to the extent that it advances other external policy goals. A thriving and healthy arts sector is an intrinsically good thing, which needs no justification other than the good which it itself brings to a decent, sophisticated and liberal society.
Artistic Freedom
The third of the core values which a Coalition government will bring to arts policy is respect for artistic freedom. In the past couple of years we have had in this country, as you know, a great deal of public discussion about freedom of speech and expression. I have been very critical of the apparent subjugation by the current government of freedom of speech to other values which, in the eyes of the Government, are more important. This was, shockingly, in evidence in the recent re-write of the Australia Council Act, where artistic freedom was sought to be removed from the list of the core values of the Australia Council, and relegated to a less prominent position in the new Act. It was only after vigorous criticism from the opposition that the government relented and restored artistic freedom to its proper place.
As Charles Rosen argues in his recent book Freedom and the Arts, there is an ineradicable connection between political freedom and artistic expression. To quote Professor Rosen:
‘The artist is expected … to violate conventions – to entertain, to surprise, to outrage, to be original. That is the special status of art among all other activities … It is the source of freedom; it prevents the wheels of the social machine from locking into paralysis.’
And so, the arts should never be the captive of the political agenda of the day: the freedom of the artist to develop his or her creativity wherever it may take them must always be protected and defended.
Self-Confidence
The fourth of the values about which I wish to speak I call self-confidence. Labor is wedded to an inward-looking, obsoletely nationalistic view of the arts, which is an echo of the ‘cultural cringe’ of earlier times. Modern Australians are far more sophisticated, and international in their outlook, than Labor gives them credit for. The Coalition sees Australia as one of the world’s great creative nations, whose best musicians, actors, dancers, writers, painters, directors, film-makers, arts administrators and creative technicians command respect around the world. Our approach to arts policy, that is the Coalition’s approach to arts policy, reflects the self-confidence of our cultural sector. In particular, while the Coalition will always encourage the telling of Australia’s stories in Australian voices through the various artistic genres, we understand as well that our great artists and arts companies are and should always be significant contributors to and interpreters of the international repertoire – in particular, the great classical works and artistic movements which have shaped and defined Western civilization.
One thing that has particularly disappointed me about the current Labor government has been its dismantling of government support for international touring by Australia’s premier arts companies. The capacity of Australia’s best arts companies to take the best that Australia has to offer to the world has been good for the arts companies, and good for Australia’s international reputation as a significant cultural force on the world stage. In the current resource-constrained environment, were I to be Arts Minister, would not be in a position to restore that funding at once, but I would seek to do so when budget circumstances permit. As a first step, a Coalition Government would re-establish the Australian International Cultural Council – abolished by Labor – to revive the international dimension of our cultural policies.
Sustainability
The next of the core values I wish to address is sustainability. Too often, arts funding rewards failure and punishes success. The Coalition acknowledges that there is a necessary role for government in funding our great arts companies and artistic enterprises. However we believe that, wherever possible, funding should be structured so as to encourage commercial success – an approach which has, in particular, demonstrated its worth in the development of the film and television industry. We also see an increasing role for private philanthropy in supporting the operation, in particular, of performing arts companies, thereby making their work more affordable and accessible to a wider audience. When we say that, we don’t merely mean the major performing arts companies but the small, community-based arts companies, as well.
Accessibility
Lastly, and this is particularly germane to you in Western Sydney, I want to say a few words about accessibility. Labor’s approach to arts funding too often reflects a snobbish, politically correct obsession with the tastes of a small, conceited and self-selecting elite,and a condescending attitude towards popular taste. It is also affected a condescending attitude towards smaller arts practitioners and those who engage in their practice in the great regional and rural centres of Australia. Since Labor is a party of the big cities, in particular the inner cities, its cultural policy and funding priorities reflect their narrow and elitist outlook. The Coalition knows that, throughout Australia, in the regions no less than the big cities, the suburbs no less than the inner cities, there is a devoted arts public and devoted arts practitioners, who are entitled to reasonable access to the arts funding dollar and reasonable opportunities of access to the performing and visual arts in their own communities. We also believe that funding decisions should take account of the willingness of the beneficiaries to present art which is accessible to and enjoyed by the broader public.
I was particularly alarmed that the recent re-write of the Australia Council Act eliminated reference to regional arts and community-based arts. Although Mr Burke this morning chose to tell a lie about an amendment I moved to the Australia Council bill concerning ministerial discretion – because there was no such amendment – one amendment I did seek to move that was defeated by the combined weight of the Labor Party and the Greens was to make reference to regional arts and community-based arts as one of the core values of the Australia Council. Under this current government, financial support for regional arts has fallen dramatically and financial support for rural arts has fallen more dramatically still – by almost half in six years. As well, there is negligible representation on the newly-constituted board of the Australia Council of regional or community-based arts practitioners. The only member of the Australia Council Board who lists his address as being outside a capital city comes from Geelong but lists his business address in Melbourne.
A Coalition Government would always show more respect for regional and community-based arts, such as the very arts practitioners represented here today. In a very real sense, the dynamism of the arts sector in Australia today lies not with the artistic establishment, to which the Australia Council has for so long catered, but with people such as you.
Let me say this, by way of conclusion. I have an ambitious, optimistic agenda for the arts in Australia. It is an agenda free of the self-limiting shackles of parochialism and political correctness. It is an agenda that values the arts for their own sake – not as a cog in the wheel of other government priorities; which cherishes artistic freedom; which values all art forms – the traditional canonical works as well as those on the leading edge of creativity and emerging art forms; and which seeks to make the arts accessible to all Australians, be they practitioners or audiences or gallery visitors – including the many millions who are not necessarily among the ‘arts establishment’, but whose appreciation of the best in our culture is not inferior to that of those who are. It is an agenda that is unashamed of excellence, but is inspired by the frank egalitarian view that there is an arts public and there are great artists in all parts of Australia – in the inner cities, the outer suburbs, the smaller states, the regions – which appreciates and values artistic excellence in equal measure.
It is that vision of the arts which has inspired me throughout my adult life. And it is a vision which, were there to be a change of government in 3 weeks’ time, would inspire a Coalition government to take the arts in Australia to a new plane of creative excellence.
Thank you.
(Pictured: George Brandis)
