Since Federation, the federal government has been committed to cultural support, as part of its mission of creating a national culture across its disparate and sparsely populated continent, through communications networks, media (especially the Australian Broadcasting Commission — the ABC – established in 1932) and in its role as cultural entrepreneur of broadcasts and tours of orchestras, theatre, and performing artists and so on. This role was gradually assumed by commercial entrepreneurs such as J. C. Williamson but the entrepreneurial role of government – especially (but not only) through the ABC – has continued.

The Commonwealth Literary Fund was the first federal grants body (1908) followed by the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board in 1912. As mass media forms developed, the federal government conducted inquiries into radio, cinema and performing arts, concerned as much with potential harms as with opportunities (see Appendix B). These concerns came to the fore during the Second World War when the Commonwealth made cultural regulation a priority of wartime policy (banning such things as American popular music – condemned as ‘jungle music’^[1] – and instituting stringent content controls on the media).

A desire to encourage Australian cultural production was recognised in the establishment of the first Arts Council of Australia – NSW branch (1943), National Archives (1944), National Film Board (1945) and state symphony orchestras (from 1946). There was also a campaign to establish a national theatre and/or arts council as part of the vision for postwar reconstruction (Johanson and Rentschler 2002: 168-9) but the election of the conservative government of Robert Menzies in 1949 put paid to that. Culture smacked of ‘socialism’.