The New Platform Papers Vol 2, From the Heart: The Voice, the Arts and Australian Identity: The Voice, the Arts and Australian Identity

How will the Voice to Parliament change Australia? In this second collection of the New Platform Papers, From the Heart: The Voice, the Arts and Australian Identity, Josephine Caust, a veteran of Australian arts policy, and major First Nations thinkers and writers from the creative arts, law and philosophy reflect on the culture of Australian democracy and the role of the arts within it. In the first commissioned essay of the new series, Arts, Culture and Country, Josephine Caust asks if the self-serving behaviour that has dominated Parliament for three decades is the product of a nation that has not taken culture seriously. What would Australian government look like if it took its lead from the First Nations of this continent and replaced KPIs with a concept in which arts, culture and country were one? In two dazzling and powerful companion essays, artist and philosopher Tyson Yunkaporta sketches the parallel paths traced by competing concepts of art, culture and economic value through the history of relations between Aboriginal and colonial Australia; and Noel Pearson launches a blistering assault on the 'natural rate of unemployment' that has deliberately sacrificed parts of the population to poverty and hopelessness, and calls for a job guarantee. Drawing on the 2022 Currency House Authors Convention From the Heart: the implications for the arts—the sector responds, this volume also highlights the addresses of keynote speakers Eddie Synot, Sally Scales and Rachael Maza, on the meaning of sovereignty in Australian law and culture and how it should be embodied in the Voice to Parliament and the National Cultural Policy. This volume also includes Wesley Enoch's bestselling essay from the original series of Platform Papers, Take Me to Your Leader: The dilemma of cultural leadership.

About the Author :
Katharine Brisbane AM, Hon.Ph.D (UNSW, UWA) was co-founder in 1971 of Currency Press Pty Ltd, the performing arts publishers and its publisher for 30 years. In 2001 she founded Currency House Inc. as a non-profit association to assert the value of the performing arts in public life. She was a theatre critic for 21 years, notably national critic of the Australian 1967–74 during a time of radical change; and has published extensively on the history of Australian theatre, including Not Wrong, Just Different: Observations on the Rise of Contemporary Australian Theatre (2005) and on drama in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (ed Peter Pierce, 2009). Over 40 years she has received many awards for service to the performing arts. WESLEY ENOCH is the eldest son of Doug and Lyn Enoch who hail from Stradbroke Island. His writing credits include The Sunshine Club, The Seven Stages of Grieving (co-written with Deborah Mailman) and Black Medea all of which he also directed; and The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table which won the 2005 Patrick White Playwrights' Award. Enoch has been Artistic Director of Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts, Artistic Director of the Queensland Theatre Company, a Resident Director with the Sydney Theatre Company and is the current Artistic Director of the Sydney Festival. His extensive credits as a director include the premiere production of Stolen and a revival of The Cherry Pickers, both of which toured internationally, Capricornia, The Dreamers, Conversations with the Dead, Romeo and Juliet, Fountains Beyond, Black-ed Up, The Sapphires, Rainbow's End, Eora Crossing, Bitin' Back and Riverland. In 2002 Enoch was the recipient of a Cite Internationale des Artes residency in Paris. Other awards include a Matilda Award (The Sunshine Club 2000), Variety Club of Australia (Theatre Heart Award 2000), '98 Queens Trust Award, '97 Young Australian of The Year (Queensland Arts Section).