Reacting to the ‘Arts for Labor’ mantra and reflecting their economic rationalist thinking, the Coalition in opposition endorsed a hardline arts policy in 1993 as part of the Fightback! portfolio of policies that advocated kneecapping the Australia Council and devolving arts funding to the states (see exhibit 1). This document enthusiastically embraced the tenets of economic rationalism. Cultural agencies were to be cut adrift from the steady drip of public money and forced to compete in the marketplace. Strong adverse reaction to this hardline policy at the 1993 election, especially from influential conservative cultural lobbyists, persuaded the Coalition to reconsider this policy approach and adopt a softer line.[2]
Exhibit 1: Fightback! The 1993 Coalition Vision for the Arts in Australia
In March 1993, the Coalition opposition released its Arts policy as part of its Fightback Australia! platform in the lead-up to the March election. At the time, John Hewson, a committed economic rationalist, was Liberal Party leader and Senator Michael Baume was opposition arts spokesman. A Vision for the Arts in Australia was a bold document designed to counteract Prime Minister Paul Keating’s underwriting of an expert panel that was developing a Commonwealth statement of cultural policy (Creative Nation was published in 1994).
The pressure to re-think arts and cultural policy arose from successive debates in parliament, the media and within the arts community. This policy sought to: clarify the respective roles of Federal, state and local government; redress declining Federal funding to the Arts and Cultural Heritage area; quell controversy about grant funding to trade union organisations; address the perception of inadequate allocation of funds to community arts by the Australia Council; and counter general unrest about the direction of the Australia Council under Rodney Hall’s chairmanship. A ghost that shadowed this debate was former opposition arts’ minister Chris Puplick’s declaration in 1988 that the Australia Council should be abolished. Although this policy was later retracted, the fallout from this statement framed the reaction to the subsequent Coalition arts policy.
The public and media impression of the Visions document was that the Coalition was committed to savaging support for art and culture by such measures as:
shifting funding of national organisations to the Federal department;
restructuring the Australia Council to redress peer review mechanisms, and provide incentive payments rather than grants;
shifting the funding of non-national arts organisations to the states;
underwriting national and international touring programs; and
enhancing tax incentive schemes to encourage private investment and involvement in the arts.
The policy was also committed to supporting youth arts, folk heritage, popular music and pushing the film industry towards a private sector and commercial underpinning. Rather than repudiating the arts, this policy explicitly confirmed the Coalition’s commitment to the arts, and acknowledged the importance of culture in national identity, the pursuit of excellence in the arts and centrality of art and culture in international perceptions of Australia. But it also observed that ‘the great bulk of arts activity in Australia proceeds without the need for taxpayer support’ (The Coalition Arts Policy ‘An agenda for the arts’ 1993). This was perhaps the greatest un-stated threat to the cosy arrangement enjoyed by the arts fraternity with arts funding organisations.
In fact, the Vision document advocated a major shift in mechanisms of support from the ‘drip feed’ model of grants and direct funding to matching funding, tax incentive and audience-oriented forms of support. The policy also advocated a range of accountability, duplication of services and market-sensitive schemes to evaluate the effectiveness of support mechanisms and eliminate the perceived rampant cronyism and cliquey behaviour of grant bodies such as the Australia Council. The document concluded by quoting John Hewson’s promise not ‘to inhibit the further growth of our arts and cultural industries’ but to let ‘the arts industry in Australia … thrive and grow’ (The Coalition Arts Policy ‘Executive Summary’ 1993: 11).
Reaction to the Vision document was heated and sustained. The arts community was supported by influential media, commentators who condemned the Coalition policy, in particular, its threat to the Australia Council and the statutory independence of the arts. Further controversy raged over the anticipated negative impact of a GST on the arts sector. United opposition to the Coalition policy was sealed by the Government’s release of its election cultural policy, Distinctly Australian, The Future of Australia’s Cultural Development which anticipated a commitment to a comprehensive cultural policy and re-evaluation of arts and culture as vibrant and economically valuable cultural industries. By the time of the election, the arts community had come out strongly in support of the Keating government and was believed to have influenced the election outcome and Labor’s victory.
Despite the enthusiasm of the arts community for the government, the next budget delivered little to the sector with funding remaining virtually unchanged. Indeed, Senator Baume claimed that the only increase in funding was to the ‘Keating’ fellowships. Baume himself had distanced himself from the Vision document in the lead-up to the election on the basis of the negative press it attracted and had lobbied unsuccessfully for Hewson to revise the policy. After the election, Hewson took on the arts portfolio himself while Baume continued to profess unease with the Coalition’s policy from the backbench and in his retirement.
In all, the significance of the A Vision for the Arts in Australia was profound, galvanising the arts community into an effective and relentless lobbying network wedded to increasingly outdated patronage models of arts funding and resisting attempts to devise new philosophies and mechanisms of support. The fact that the reaction of the arts community was based on a misunderstanding of the Visions document makes the controversial role it has in Australian cultural policy all the more ironic.
When elected in 1996, the incoming Howard government lacked a coherent cultural policy of its own, so much of the thrust of Creative Nation continued to drive cultural policy at the coalface, though not by that name. Cultural lobbyists and interest bodies resumed their courting of government. Cultural agencies continued, somewhat uncertainly, to manage on reduced budgets. Cultural practitioners continued to be trained and aspire to a cultural profession. Cultural export continued to be favoured by government although Howard was less interested in the new ‘Asian Tigers’ (so enthusiastically embraced by Keating) and was more at home in re-connecting with Europe and North America. Culture continued to be supported and the Howard government gradually evolved its own elite nurturer-cum-architect model that culminated in the decision to build a new national cultural institution in Canberra, the National Portrait Gallery (of which his wife was patron).
Meanwhile, Creative Nation lived on as an important policy learning tool not only for state and local governments in Australia but also internationally. The document shaped the incoming Blair Labour government’s arts and cultural policy in Britain, for example. Its philosophy and strategies were copied by local think tanks that influenced the facilitation and architect models adopted by the UK's Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS 2004). In contrast, there was a lack of arts and cultural policy direction in the Coalition government in Australia nationally (see Borghino 1999; Marr 2006; Strickland 2004) and the sector muddled along at the federal level while the states and local government became more proactive and innovative (Craik, Davis, Sunderland 2000). Ironically, the intent of the IAC report was at last being implemented.