Platform Papers 55: Arts, Politics, Money: Revisiting Australia's Cultural Policy

On 13 March 2013, at the National Press Club in Canberra, Arts Minister Simon Crean launched Creative Australia, the country's first comprehensive cultural policy statement since Paul Keating's Creative Nation almost twenty years earlier. It was soon buried by the incoming Abbott Government. Since then cultural policy, and more specifically arts policy, and its instrument the Australia Council, have been blown back and forth by the winds of change. Where do we stand now? Throsby argues that Australia's cultural identity remains a contestable issue. The economic impact of our immigrant population has strengthened visibly and carried our changing culture into distant parts of the world. Artists and performers reflect this in their work. At the same time the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture in defining Australia's cultural identity continues to be of fundamental significance. Questions of who we are as a country and where we are heading remain important matters for public discussion. We don't need another cultural policy document just yet, he says, but we do need to invigorate the national debate.

About the Author :
DAVID THROSBY is internationally known for his work in the economics of arts and culture. He is Professor of Economics at Macquarie University and his field of research and writing has included the economic role of artists, the economics of public intervention in arts markets, cultural development, cultural policy, heritage issues and the sustainability of cultural processes. His books include The Economics of the Performing Arts (with Glenn Withers) and Economics and Culture. He has produced several studies for the Australia Council, including But What Do You Do for a Living? A New Economic Study of Australian Artists (with Beverley Thompson, 1994) and Don't Give Up Your Day Job: an Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia (with Virginia Hollister, 2003). He has been a consultant to the World Bank, the OECD, FAO and UNESCO and in 1990–93 chaired three Prime Minister's Working Groups on ecologically sustainable development. He is a past President of the Association for Cultural Economics International, and was Foundation Chair of the National Association for the Visual Arts. He has served on the boards of the Australian Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Copyright Agency Ltd and VISCOPY. He is also a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Cultural Economics, the International Journal of Cultural Policy, Poetics and the Pacific Economic Bulletin. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 1988. Throsby has also written several plays, one of which (The Number-One Rooster) was produced at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1975.