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The Coalition’s Vision for the Arts in a Confident and Outward-looking Australia

From an Address by Senator The Hon George Brandis QC to The Western Sydney Arts Forum Blacktown 19 August 2013

What 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 noless 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 topresent 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.