When I was asked to review Australia’s current national cultural policy in 2023, I was gratified to see it delivered much-needed optimism and unfamiliar hope for a sector bludgeoned by nine consecutive years of funding cuts and three decades of policy drift and neglect. ‘Revive’ was an appropriate name for a policy that recognised its deficit starting point and the sector’s ‘post’-Covid exhaustion. It was ambitious without glossing over how hard things were or how much work there was still to go.
But whether Revive was a gamechanger or just a good start will be determined by this next iteration. Because the truth is, last time, the bar was depressingly low. The Albanese Government could have merely taken a win by launching Australia’s first cultural policy in 29 years to last more than six months, and ending the annual hemorrhaging of federal arts funding.
ArtsHub: Building a new National Cultural Policy – Burke talks to ArtsHub
But while it did more – 75 of its 85 funded strategies already underway – the overall conditions for artists, cultural workers, organisations, participants and audiences have worsened since its launch, not improved.
Reports from across Australia show the viability of cultural organisations and individual creative practice has never been less certain, our work never more likely to be censored or prevented from finding its audience.
Drafting a new national cultural policy – quick links
Why a new national cultural policy offers real opportunity
Ironically, the dire state of Australia’s cultural sector also presents a unique opportunity. While our deficits and desperation have never been so high, our issues have never been more closely shared – our collective experience and existential panic cutting across artforms, locations and types of engagement. Which means a new national cultural policy could meet this moment with politically- and artform-agnostic strategies that raise the bar for us all.
Unfortunately, so far, the public consultation paper looks more like a rinse and repeat exercise. The sector is expecting a PR spin that will turn ‘revive’ into ‘thrive’ or some such self-congratulatory update. And yes, Revive delivered much that’s worth celebrating.
But what we need now is a renewed national cultural policy that walks its own talk; that extends and embeds commitments across portfolios and party lines; makes bold decisions that cast off the ways ‘things have always been done’; and makes it possible for all Australians to meaningfully engage with and contribute to art and culture.
Guiding principles for a new national cultural policy
1. Whole-of-government approach
In his Minister’s Message to the public consultation paper, Minister for the Arts Tony Burke reminds us that the entire concept of cultural policy ‘is to make sure the arts aren’t simply an afterthought’.
Revive began this work with initiatives delivered across education, workplace safety, disability, mental health and Indigenous portfolios. This now needs to be expanded across the full span of government decision-making – because every decision the Australian Government makes affects the arts and cultural sector, and arts and cultural engagement impact every aspect of Australian life.
A renewed national cultural policy is an opportunity to recognise this contribution by implementing new mechanisms for genuine cross-government collaboration. As suggested by cultural think-tank A New Approach before the last consultation, this could be based on the Australian Government’s comparable 2030 plans for agriculture, sport, innovation and tourism to support the use of ‘arts and cultural activities in existing and new initiatives across all relevant portfolios’.
2. Recommitment to civic infrastructure
Art and culture are core components of Australia’s civic infrastructure, or what Australian-based academic Justin O’Connor describes in his book Culture is Not an Industry as the ‘basic requirements for a decent, equitable and sustainable life in common’.
As such, art and culture should be considered (and resourced) alongside education, health, youth, disability, ageing, housing, social services and regional development. Because we do not sit apart from, or in competition with, any of these vital human services; we are a part of them.
This doesn’t just encompass the hard infrastructure of venues, institutions and heritage sites, but the soft infrastructure of policies, programs, practices and people that underpin and foster civic engagement and social relationships.
Unfortunately, one of the great ironies of Revive is that the sector currently has a full suite of state, territory and federal cultural policies in place for the first time and has never been more vulnerable. Well-meaning or performative policies intended to herald what Burke describes as the ‘restoration of culture to be at the centre of our national life’ have been accompanied by systemic deprioritisation of civic infrastructure in all areas.
Outside of arts and culture, this can also be seen in Australia’s current inflation, housing and femicide crises, rising Aboriginal deaths in custody, planned disinvestment in the NDIS, and increasing restrictions on human rights. For Australia to ‘walk the talk’ of its own rhetoric, we need a serious commitment to rebuilding public trust and the infrastructure that supports us.
As US cultural strategist Emil J Kang notes, treating culture as civic infrastructure ‘changes what gets counted, who gets capitalised, and which organisations are treated as part of the public system rather than as worthy exceptions to it’.
3. Aligned and proportionate investment
Research from A New Approach has recently confirmed that Australian investment in arts and culture is not keeping pace with our population, and State and Territory Government expenditure (39%) is outpacing Federal Government investment (36%) for the first time. In 2023-24, federal expenditure was the lowest on record ($114 per capita). This leaves Australia in the bottom quarter of comparable Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
Yet, the Australian Government continues to direct greater investment to politicised ‘priority’ industries that employ fewer people to provide fewer outcomes across fewer portfolio areas. This is a choice, not an evidence-based strategy.
This disparity is also felt within the sector itself, with more investment going to prop up failing cultural institutions than small-to-medium sized organisations, which consistently outperform their larger counterparts in terms of reach, representation, access and return on investment.
Government spending on arts and culture should be proportionate to evidence over lobbying interests, and impact over unquestioned legacy – with a particular focus on increasing support for small-to-medium organisations and individual artists.
This is not a handout for some nice-but-optional window dressing. This is a strategic investment in meeting government priorities across multiple portfolio areas – achieved by increasing investment in arts and culture to match government spending on sport (which fewer Australians engage in), hugely damaging data centres that will create more problems than they solve, or entirely imaginary submarines.
4. Non-partisan collaboration
This process marks first time in history that Australia will have consecutive national cultural policies – which is something else worth celebrating.
However, with cultural wars deepening, the partisan framing and rhetoric of the existing policy puts the sector it aims to support at greater risk. Arts and cultural policy will only be sustainable when it is genuinely non-partisan, but no national cultural policy has ever survived a change in government in Australia.
We need a renewed cultural policy to be more than a once-in-a-generation opportunity; we need it to be the status quo. Which means this process must be both collaborative and consider its impact beyond the next four-year term. As Australian arts leader Esther Anatolitis wrote prior to the launch of Revive, ‘the Albanese Government’s great challenge is to embed cultural policy across portfolios in such a way that it can’t simply be jettisoned following a change of government’.
If a crossbench approach is too much to ask, we at least need an end to hostilities. Part of valuing our sector is not using us to score points against the other side.
5. Pluralism over ‘cohesion’ and censorship
Taking its lead from the Australian Government, arts and cultural organisations have recently discovered a newfound duty to preserve ‘social cohesion’ – over and above their stated purpose or values, and apparently redefined to mean social consensus, conformity and coercion.
Australia has entered its ‘cultural McCarthyism’ era, characterised by rising authoritarianism, regressive legislative change, deepening cultural unsafety, racism and religious intolerance, and an unprecedented increase in arts and cultural censorship.
At last count, 66 Australian arts and cultural organisations initiatives and groups have been accused of censoring, threatening or otherwise harming their own artists, cultural workers or audiences between 2023 and 2026 alone (on top of many others harmed by those outside our sector).
This has not only happened in the time of Revive, but been explicitly enacted by premiers, ministers and statutory authorities (among others) – making hypocrites of policy makers, funders and cultural organisations, and increasing the risks they hoped their actions would avoid.
Prioritisation of such problematic and inconsistent definitions of ‘social cohesion’ over organisational purpose and basic human rights must be immediately stopped and reversed – and it’s devastating impacts repaired.
6. Climate responsibility
Revive was disappointingly silent on the climate crisis. But while it has since been followed by investment in the new Creative Climate consortium, it is crucial that climate be better addressed in this next iteration.
This must include an attitudinal change away from the ‘all funding is good funding’ rhetoric to not disadvantage the increasing number of organisations fundraising from an environmental or ethical perspective. Instead of criticising artists and organisations who turn down ‘art washing’ income from the resource industry, big polluters or other unethical partners, the Australian Government needs to tax those polluters and redistribute the income instead.
Unfortunately, the consultation process has already undermined any potential recommendations in this area – with the Office for the Arts website stating it will use artificial intelligence tools to manage and analyse submissions. When nearly every arts organisation in Australia has some sort of strategic priority on reducing their environmental footprint, this use of AI makes meeting those ambitions harder – not to mention making us complicit in a range of other workforce and social injustice issues.
Have your say on the new national cultural policy
While much of my own draft submission is unlikely to endear me to the well-meaning and hard-working policy makers behind the renewed strategy, not everyone is in a position to say these things our loud.
It is vital that artists, cultural workers, audiences and allies have their say by 24 May by:
- Reading the public consultation paper (which is also available in Auslan and Easy Read).
- Contributing by either:
- Providing a 500-word statement on the online form.
- Uploading your own submission. Written submissions can be simple – ideally no more than 3 pages. As Penelope Benton and Nicole Beyer wrote in the lead-up to the last consultation: ‘You don’t need to articulate the value of the arts, or the economic benefits. This consultation is simply asking for what we need moving forward.’
- Contacting 1800 248 025 or [email protected] to contribute in another format.
A version of this post was originally published with Kate Larsen’s draft submission in her Words, Thoughts and Ponderings enews.
