La Trobe University Essay

essay

LA TROBE UNIVERSITY ESSAY

FOR ART'S SAKE

JOS&EACUTE; BORGHINO

Strayuns All, Let Us Read Joyce!

LINDA JAIVIN'S LATEST BOOK Miles Walker, You're Dead, (Text Publishing, September 1999), is set in an Australia that's not quite the one we live in now -- it exists in a parallel universe where it's sometimes known as 'Strayer' and its inhabitants are called 'Strayuns'. The contrast between these two 'Australias' is drawn most clearly when Jaivin describes her fictional country's attitude to culture and the arts:

If we [Strayuns] were passionate about anything, it was culture. The streets swarmed with poets and sculptors and film-makers. You couldn't turn a corner without bumping into public artwork, or lick a stamp without finding a famous artist on the tip of your tongue. People awaited with baited breath the announcements of who'd won the numerous, coveted art prizes, music awards, and literary medals. Some doctors even attributed the prevalence of asthma in our country to this habit of collective breath-holding ...
Corporations vied to sponsor new works of modern dance and experimental jazz. Even the commercial television stations dedicated nearly all their prime-time programming to the arts. There were tabloid shows called 'Art/Life' and sitcoms like 'One for the Monet' ...
We pitied people without any creative potential. Unable to contribute to society, they tended to turn to politics. Once in office, the politicians clamoured for invitations to open art exhibitions; they begged for the chance to launch books. Their parties competed in promising ever better conditions for artists, grander festivals, bigger prizes. The government...even gave artists money to send their work overseas. Not, the politicians emphasised, that their work wasn't welcome at home, but in order that they may gain what was known as an 'international audience' and win glory for the country. (pp. 12-14)

Jaivin's satire works because we immediately recognise the place described as Not-Australia -- the unalloyed enthusiasm for the arts displayed by Strayer's corporate world, media and politicians set it apart from the real Australia we inhabit. And yet, many real life Australians are passionate about culture, and there are moments when we (in the culture industries) think that a cultural utopia like the one Jaivin describes is tantalisingly close. Are we delusional? Why hasn't this utopia arrived yet? And what can we do to prepare its way? These are some of the questions I want to explore here.

Who's Afraid of an Arts Policy?

     Sometimes clichés are true: cultural policy in Australia is at a crossroads. The Howard Government needs to make decisions now about the place of culture and the arts in Australia that will have far-reaching consequences for the quality of life of all Australians. Cultural policy is increasingly implicated in a range of other policy settings. For instance, the creation and consumption of culture is already an economic as well as an aesthetic issue. Australia is currently a net importer of intellectual property -- books, films, software, data, etc. -- a type of commodity best conceptualised as cultural rather than industrial. Approximately six out of every seven dollars collected in royalty or license fees flows out of Australia, and three out of every four dollars spent purchasing copyright material goes to owners overseas. Exporters of culture (the biggest are the USA and Britain) will continue to target Australia as a buyer for their product, and there are no signs of our present copyright deficit decreasing in the near future.
    To have any chance of dealing with this situation, Australia needs a cultural policy that is directly connected to our education, communications and intellectual property policies, as well as to our scientific research and development, tourism and tax policies. The present Federal Government's ability to develop such a coherent, long-term cultural policy, however, is hampered by its perception of the political allegiances of the arts community.
     Since the 1993 Federal Election, when the 'Arts For Labor' push reinvigorated Keating's faltering campaign, the arts community has been badged as solidly pro-Labor. What tends to be forgotten, however, is how aggressively anti-arts the Coalition's 1993 campaign was, promising a virtual dismemberment of the Australia Council and the devolution of arts funding to the States. During the 1996 election, the Coalition seemed to have learned its lesson, carefully neutralising the arts vote by, for example, avoiding the whole issue of funding and hardly proposing any changes to the Australia Council. Consequently, the impact of any pro-Keating arts push in 1996 was greatly diminished. But whether or not the flight of the culturati to Labor was real, the perception of the arts as pro-Labor definitely contributed to the Coalition's reluctance to make any commitment beyond a very basic arts policy when it came to power. Unfortunately, in the 1998 election, the Coalition reverted to type with a series of extraordinarily ham-fisted advertisements targetting Labor's arts policy as 'handouts for the elite arts'. If the arts community had ever needed any reminder of why it (supposedly) preferred Labor, this ad campaign provided it. The newspaper, television and radio ads were a combination of political expediency (the Coalition wanting to remind the non-arts community about Keating's alleged extravagance towards the arts), desperation (it looked like the National Party was going to be decimated by Hanson's One Nation) and sheer stupidity (as if a Hansonite would give their preferences to the Coalition purely because of Labor's arts policy!). The Arts Minister, Senator Alston, had to hurriedly distance the Coalition from its own ads and there were rumours that Howard had rejected Alston's 'well-considered' arts policy 'and opted for minimal support' for the arts instead (Sydney Morning Herald , 2 October 1998).
     By remaining aloof from the arts community, by assuming that artists are irretrievably pink in their political loyalties, the present Government is missing a great opportunity to put in place the cultural settings that Australia needs for the future.
     But there needn't be a gulf between the artistic community and the Coalition. It was, after all, John Gorton who partly laid the groundwork for the cultural resurgence of the 1970s. And, as Peter Collins in New South Wales and Jeff Kennett in Victoria have both proved, Liberal leaders have very successfully identified themselves with the arts. Why is it that politicians at the State level can make the arts a central part of their political persona, yet in Canberra politicians avoid the arts as, at best, irrelevant or, at worst, dangerous? Is it the lingering ghost of Keating? Maybe the difference between State and Federal political engagement with the arts is partly to do with the existence of the Australia Council. Set up as an arm's length funding agency, the Australia Council necessarily distances the Federal Arts Minister from the exercise of direct power over grants. By contrast, at the State level, arts funding is much more hands on -- Kennett apparently signs off on every grant. Politics is all about the exercise of power, so perhaps the Australia Council's erosion of the Federal Minister's influence makes the Arts portfolio less attractive. In Victoria and New South Wales, not only is the arts portfolio in Cabinet, but the Premier holds it -- in Canberra, although Alston is a Cabinet Minister, the day-to-day running is handled by the junior Arts Minister (McGauran) who is outside Cabinet.
     As the Howard Government moves into the second year of its second term, it is still too early to determine whether its early reluctance about the arts has softened, but three current matters offer the opportunity for rapprochement between the Coalition and artists or, at least, the possibility to re-open a dialogue: the Nugent Inquiry; Educational Lending Right; and the Australia Council's research into the perceived value of the arts. The Howard Government's responses to these three matters will be good indicators of any change in its attitude.

The Nugent Inquiry

     In December 1998, Senator Alston set up a Committee to be chaired by Dr Helen Nugent (who is also Deputy Chair of the Australia Council and Chair of the Council's Major Organisations Fund) to identify 'options and [make] recommendations on actions that can be taken by governments and the sector to ensure that Australia has a financially healthy, artistically vibrant and broadly accessible major performing arts sector.'
     The Nugent Committee released 'Securing The Future' (a discussion paper) in August 1999 as a prompt to further consultations before a final report is submitted to the Minister, probably before the end of this year. The discussion paper is a wide-ranging examination of the major performing arts scene in Australia. It looks at thirty-one performing arts companies ranging across the major symphony orchestras, State theatre companies, national and State opera, dance and ballet companies, the Bell Shakespeare Company and Circus Oz. Issues discussed include touring and Australian content, the direct and indirect economic and cultural contributions of these companies to Australian society, the role of Government support, and structural changes in the industry.
     'Securing The Future' doesn't give too much away but does indicate a desire to move away from what it calls a 'reactive mode' of response to the challenges besetting the sector towards a more strategic, 'proactive approach'. Boil away the management-consultancy-speak and the clear hint is that more money for this sector will probably be made available and that it will be tied to specific, ongoing performance agreements between the Inquiry Companies and the State and Federal Governments.
     It was always highly unlikely that the Nugent Inquiry would result in funding cuts to the Inquiry Companies -- there is too much invested in these flagship performing arts companies for State and Federal Governments to walk away, now; and there are too many connections at Board level between these companies and Government for cuts to happen. According to 'Securing the Future', the major performing arts companies receive $86.6 million per annum in direct subsidies -- making them the ,lite of the ,lite. If the arts sector is usually assumed to be pro-Labor, the opposite is true of the audiences for the major performing arts companies, whose demographics are dominated by the traditional Coalition voter.
     It is clearly a hopeful sign of improving relations between Government and the arts when an inquiry is set up that, in all probability, will deliver an increase in funding for part of the arts sector. But what about those performing arts companies not covered by the inquiry? What about the artforms outside the performing arts? After the inquiry submits its final report and extra funding is found for the Big End of Town, how will the Government deal with the inevitable calls for increased funding from those sectors of the arts demonstrably less 'élite' and more community-based, less expensive to run but also less connected with traditional Liberal demographics? Will there be a widening gap between the well-funded, flagship performing arts companies and the rest of the arts which become increasingly under-funded? If the Government fails to move quickly to offer the wider arts sector better funding, then its insults about 'élites' could come back to haunt it.

Educational Lending Right

     After over twenty years of lobbying, the Australian Society of Authors recently secured Educational Lending Right as part of a package negotiated by the publishing industry with the Democrats. An unprecedented cross-industry coalition of the ASA, the Australian Booksellers Association, the Australian Publishers Association and the Printing Industries Association of Australia had argued since last year for books to be GST-exempt. Although this anti-GST battle was lost, the publishing industry coalition managed to convince the Democrats and Government to put in place a compensation package of $240 million over four years, including a total of $38 million for an Educational Lending Right scheme for authors and publishers. Briefly, this scheme compensates Australian authors and publishers for income foregone when their books are held by educational libraries. A similar scheme has operated very successfully in public libraries since 1974 and now pays out almost $5 million a year. The larger number of books held in educational libraries means that ELR will require a larger outlay: $8 million in the first year, rising by a million dollars a year to $11 million in the fourth year of the package.
     There is a sense of justified euphoria in the writing community over the decision to finally institute ELR, but there is also the realisation that the Government had to be dragged to the negotiating table kicking and screaming before it agreed -- and that it was the Democrats who did the dragging. In fact, earlier this year the Government had rejected a previous request from the ASA for ELR, claiming budgetary restrictions at a time when it was projecting a budget surplus of over $8 billion! There is also the realisation that ELR has come at a high price -- a GST on books that will have negative economic effects on the industry and on writers. And, more importantly, the arts community realises that this newtax on books signals the Government's refusal to accommodate broader cultural agendas -- for instance, the ASA argued during the anti-GST-on-books campaign that many countries have introduced a value added tax regime which still acknowledged the importance of literacy, education and knowledge by exempting books altogether or taxing them at a lower rate, but the Government ignored these arguments, preferring the 'purity' of a 10 per cent GST on all commodities.
     For the Government to gain maximum mileage from its publishing industry compensation package, it will need to confirm quickly that ELR will continue to operate beyond the four years currently projected as the lifetime of the package. ELR should have been instituted years ago, whether there was a GST or not -- even Senator Alston has agreed that it is a fair and equitable scheme -- and it should be funded out of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, not through a special appropriation, as will be the case. The effects of the GST on the publishing industry and the arts community in general will have to be closely monitored over the next few years and the Government must intervene quickly if the predicted negative effects of the GST are borne out.

Australia Council Research

Earlier this year, the Australia Council announced that it was going to research Australian attitudes to the arts. In the initial, qualitative stage of this research, Saatchi & Saatchi (the research consultants) interviewed people from Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Newcastle, and country Queensland. The results of this initial research have already caused a flurry of heated responses -- Bruce James, the Sydney Morning Herald's visual arts critic, suggested in his column that 'all employees of Saatchi & Saatchi and the Australia Council be given time off, immediately, to leave their offices, walk the streets, see some exhibitions and get a life'. (SMH, 17 July 1999, Spectrum p. 12)
The research concludes that Australians are evenly split between those who give the arts a 'high' or 'fairly high' value and those who attribute a 'low' or 'fairly low' value to it. These findings have incensed many in the arts community because they threaten to undermine a large body of statistical evidence built up over more than a decade that shows a burgeoning participation by Australians in culture and the arts. These statistics were gathered in response to the economic rationalist imperatives of the 1980s to convince critics (from within and without Government) of the economic value of the arts. Among other things they showthat:

[T]here are 40,000 practising professional artists in Australia. Based on the 1996 Census, just over 250,000 Australians [or 3.3 per cent of the total workforce] are employed in the widely defined cultural sector...The cultural industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy as shown by employment growth: in those occupations for which comparable statistics are available from the 1991 Census, the increase was 20 per cent. The increase for total employment in the same five years was 7.4 per cent ...Visiting museums in Australia is more popular than going to football matches: 3.9 million adult Australians went to a museum in the last year compared with 3.7 million who went to any code of football. Almost 83 per cent of the adult Australian population [or 11.7 million people] are involved in some form of cultural activity (as defined by UNESCO); about 6.2 million are involved in sport. Art galleries are much more popular than cricket in Australia: 3.1 million people compared with 1.2 million. The value of the total supply of the goods and services to the Australian economy by the arts and related industry groups was $4.8 billion in 1993-94. This means that by this measure of economic size, the arts industry is bigger than the clothing industry, or the cosmetics industry, or the beer industry ...(Australia Council Fact Sheet, March 1999)

Why this disparity between statistics that show a booming arts sector and research indicating that 50 per cent of the population believe the arts to have little value? The Australia Council's consultants admit that it might have a lot to do with definitions of 'the arts'. Although many Australians will attend festivals, watch films, read a book and take their children to music or ballet classes, they tend not to see these activities as participating in the arts. Paul Costantoura, Saatchi & Saatchi's consulting researcher for the Australia Council project, puts it this way:

[A] majority of Australians appear quite able to see two definitions of 'the arts'. The first one that comes to people's minds tends to be the capital 'A' definition of 'the Arts' which includes opera, ballet, orchestral music and theatre. Outside this central core falls the little 'a' 'arts' which takes in an extraordinarily diverse array of creative and artistic pursuits. It is here that 16-year-olds will comfortably place an underground techno rave, young adults will place The Panel, parents will include what their sons and daughters bring home from school and retirees will include things they might create or do in the workshop, the kitchen or the garden. (SMH,24 July 1999, Spectrum p. 15)

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