Is it time for Australia to establish a Federal Ministry for Culture?

On the eve of the Federal Election, the next issue within the Currency House series of New Platform Papers, sees Arts consultant and Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Josephine Caust arguing for a new Federal Ministry of Culture that integrates functions currently spread across different departments and agencies.

In ‘Arts, Culture and Country’, Assoc Prof Caust describes the arts in Australia as now being perilously under-financed, politically forgotten and left stranded by the pandemic. She charts how the last decade has seen our politicians further erode the arms-length funding principle, a sharp decline in federal arts investment, a fall of Australian content in film and on TV, less showcasing of Australian culture abroad and fewer artistic collaborations overseas.

Caust, who has worked in the arts sector as a practitioner, manager, senior bureaucrat, academic and consultant and has published extensively on arts management and cultural policy, delivers an overview of what’s happened historically and recently to Australia’s whole arts and culture sector and draws on all aspects of her professional experience to reflect on Australia’s cultural policy history, making some proposals for the future. It is a narrative which is less well-known than it should be and deserves to be interrogated.

Caust compares the significant economic size of Australia’s arts and culture industries at the outset of the pandemic with the minor, belated and ill- focused support they’ve since received.

“This only proved that at a policy level the Federal Government neither valued or understood the sector,” says Caust.

“Despite the government’s assertion that economic factors determined its pandemic policy, other industries that employed fewer people were receiving far more generous support than the creative industries. The private sector could be assisted. Any sector framed as public – including universities – was likely to be ignored.”

Caust is also critical of the increased arts funding being given out for political purposes in marginal electorates; and the excessive corporatisation of our arts boards and agencies.

Caust highlights that “Corporatisation and economisation at a policy level has changed the way the arts are valued, framed, and managed. In turn, this has negatively impacted on the leadership of arts organisations and promoted economically-fixated relationships between governments and arts practitioners.

“These changes have not served the best interests of the arts or of Australia, as they devalue artists and arts practice, and convert arts organisations into commercial enterprise. This reductive paradigm focuses on the bottom line rather than the complex nature of arts practice and the unique benefits it delivers to society. Without realising it, the whole concept of what we know as the ‘arts’, has shifted. What we urgently need now is to resist the urge to rush on to the new and rediscover what is essential by going back to the basics.”

As for the financial support received by the arts and culture sectors, Caust states that “there is abundant evidence to show that government’s financial support for the arts and culture has been significantly reduced over many years. Today the arts don’t even rate a mention in the title of the government department responsible for them. Even worse, grants have been routinely awarded to communities in marginal electorates for party political purposes.”

Caust notes “Australian artists and arts workers are not typically valued or respected by those in power. They are seen as wayward and following the beat of a different drum. They are also likely to be critical of the status quo, regardless of who is in office, and publicly oppose government actions and policies with which they disagree. Coalition governments believe the arts are aligned with the left and insufficiently grateful for the public money they receive.”

Assoc Prof Caust argues for a new Federal Ministry of Culture that integrates functions currently spread across different departments and agencies – including public broadcasting, galleries, libraries, museums, major performing arts companies, orchestras and First Nations arts and heritage – with a strict arms-length and peer review operation. The Australia Council would be freed to support individual artists and middle-size and smaller companies.

“Australia needs to mature as a nation by taking its arts and culture seriously, and a Ministry of Culture would provide a central platform for the nation’s identity,” she says.

NPP2: Arts, Culture and Country is now available free on currrencyhouse.org.au
NPP2 and NPP3 will be published in December in an annual volume complete with talks from the Currency House Authors Convention in July

Image: The proposed cultural ministry would include all major art galleries such as the National Gallery of Victoria