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Culture to Connect the Dots

TWO themes recur in a conversation with Simon Crean about the national cultural policy.

First, the Arts Minister is nothing if not consultative: he has sought submissions and opinions on the policy from every quarter, convened reference groups and commissioned independent reviews. When the long-awaited policy comes to light later this year, few will be able to say they were not asked about it.

Second, Crean is bringing 42 years of public life to bear on the policy: not only his years as head of the ACTU, or his stint as opposition leader, but the multitude of portfolios he's held, such as trade, employment, education, science and regional development.

The common thread is innovation, and how the economy must be driven by research and creativity.

"The arts has a huge capacity to help underpin that innovative culture," he says. It's a line Crean comes back to time and again.
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After 15 months as Arts Minister, he has earned broad respect in the arts sector. In what many would regard as the first test of commitment to the portfolio, he goes to things.

He spent New Year's Eve at a special performance of The Importance of Being Earnest, the Melbourne Theatre Company production with Geoffrey Rush. Just over a week ago, he was at the Sydney Festival premiere of I Am Eora, a play with music and dance that evokes three key Aboriginal figures from the time of European settlement, Bennelong, Barangaroo and Pemulwuy.

It was, he says, a "fantastic fusion of the cultural and the modern".

Crean succeeded Peter Garrett as arts minister when Julia Gillard was finally able to form a government after the August 2010 election. He didn't ask for the portfolio but was pleased to take it if he could work on the cultural policy.

"It's been in our (Labor) policy for two elections and was the centrepiece of the 2020 thing; we've done bugger all," he says.

"If you've got the opportunity to be the driving force behind developing it, that was an opportunity that I jumped at."

With time, he began the machine of consultation that now has many cogs. He asked Harold Mitchell to look at ways of nudging the private sector into greater support for the arts. Just before Christmas, he put Angus James and Gabrielle Trainor in charge of a top-down review of the Australia Council.

He has convened two committees: a reference group of more than 20 arts professionals to chew over cultural policy submissions, and a working group comprising the heads of national institutions to discuss broader issues.

The Cultural Ministers Council, abandoned under the new Council of Australian Governments arrangements last year, will continue in looser form, as Crean regards as essential the co-operation of state arts ministers.

That's not counting the 450 formal submissions and about 2000 online responses to the national cultural policy discussion paper or reviews of media, school curricula and design under the auspices of other ministers. All concern culture, and are therefore dimensions to Crean's all-of-government cultural policy.

The discussion paper lays out four policy goals: cultural diversity, access to the arts through technology, excellence and boosting culture's contribution to society and the economy. Crean, who has not read all the submissions, says the reference group chaired by Julianne Schultz will help him "sift out beyond the motherhood statements" and prioritise the best ideas that came in.

Mitchell completed his review in October and came up with a 25-year blueprint for private-sector support for the arts, including tax reform. (Mitchell says he is "fully confident" the government will accept his recommendations.)

The Australia Council review is said to be the first independent audit of the grant-giving body. It will examine (using the words of inaugural chairman HC Coombs) the council's ability to encourage artists to "achieve the highest quality of which they are capable".

Crean says the outcome will be an arm's-length organisation that is responsive to government policy.

"You can't have that review internally, and nor can you have a sensible review of it in the absence of knowledge when you're trying to reposition the policy argument, the policy rationale," he says.

"So you need an institution that's going to be responsive to that."

Make no mistake: Labor's cultural policy will be about harnessing the arts to innovation, industry, education and delivery platforms such as the National Broadband Network. Arts organisations, Crean makes plain, should be able to "demonstrate your relevance to the broader agendas".

Crean is bringing to the arts his previous ministerial experience. As trade minister, for example, he changed export labels from "Made in Australia" to "Brand Australia" to show the economy's shift from manufacturing to intellectual property.

"That's our future, that's going to drive us," he says. "We have to become an economy sustainable on its smarts and creativity and applications . . . This argument about the automotive sector at

the moment: we'll never compete with China just on the manufacturing, but what China can't compete with us on is design capability because they don't invest in it; they copy everything.

"Australia's strength in the auto industry and why you've got to stay in the game is that capability, the smart end of it."

His putative cultural policy shares some of the preoccupations of Paul Keating's Creative Nation of 18 years ago, notably an insistence on communications technology (including the then newfangled internet) and "cultural industries". Reading Keating's policy document, it's surprising how similar the language and themes are to today's discussions.

Culture, Crean says, is part of the Labor brand: the national cultural policy will be comprehensive, committed to creativity and will join the dots between arts and other parts of government.

He says he wants to take the strongest possible proposals for the policy into planning discussions before the May budget. Direct funding will be a "big ask", but Crean hints that he will also seek tax incentives for the private sector and a producer offset for the video game industry. He says he has spared national cultural institutions from the increased 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend imposed on other parts of the public service.

The arts sector, he adds, should not be concerned about the removal of the Office for the Arts from its high-profile status within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. A tidying-up of government business has brought the arts office within the Department of Regional Australia, Crean's main portfolio.

 

Matthew Westwood

The Australian

17/1/2012