At the time of writing, the arts community is awaiting the Commonwealth Government’s new cultural policy vision to 2020 to be delivered by Arts Minister Peter Garrett in a forthcoming address at the National Press Club on October 27. It is perhaps the right moment to reflect on what has been delivered thus far by the Rudd Government that is pertinent to the visual arts.
Peter Garrett certainly seems to be working his way steadily through the list of election promises. Due for release in July 2009, the much debated Artists Resale Royalty Right bill is in the Senate awaiting final sign off before becoming law. Suffice it to say that a great deal of opinion has already been aired about the pros and cons of this model and it now seems pretty certainly a done deal.
Comments on the proposed changes to the Sedition clause in the Anti-Terrorism Bill were called for by the Attorney General and are now being considered. These changes would largely answer the criticisms made by the arts and media sectors about constraints on freedom of expression posed by the legislation when it was introduced by the previous Attorney General, Phillip Ruddock in 2005. Still on the subject of freedom of expression, less popular with the arts community were the comments made by the PM and various other politicians at the time of the debate in 2008 around the artwork of Bill Henson, temporarily confiscated by the police while a judgement was being made about its legality. As a result, the Australia Council was charged by government with the task of producing a set of protocols for working with children in the arts.
Fulfilling a key Labor election commitment, Peter Garrett recently announced that Australia has agreed to become a party to the United Nations Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Signing up to this international treaty is an important means for Australia to ensure greater protection and enhancement of the distinctiveness of our cultural products and services. It addresses some of the concerns which the arts and media sectors raised during the negotiations by the previous government of a Free Trade Agreement with the US.
True to its word, the Rudd Government has provided the promised support for a Creative Industries and Innovation Centre at the University of Technology in Sydney. The Centre is part of ‘Enterprise Connect’, a national network of centres offering practical assistance to help firms to build their business by focusing on innovation and creativity. The government also provided funding of $6.6 million over four years devolved to the Australia Council for the Opportunities for Young and Emerging Artists program, which includes a significant national mentoring component.
After a concerted lobbying effort by the National Advocates for Arts Education, a coalition of arts bodies of which NAVA is a member, in mid April 2009, Peter Garrett confirmed the agreement of all state and territory education ministers to ensure arts education is included in the national curriculum. This work is currently underway, being managed by the government appointed Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).
Following the 2020 Summit held in April 2008, Peter Garrett continued the discussions begun in the Creative Stream around a national cultural policy, private sector support for the arts and support arrangements for artists. He appointed some of the Summit participants as members of a continuing Creative Australia Advisory Group including Museum of Contemporary Art Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor and cultural economist Professor David Throsby.
Linked to the Summit, the Government committed funding to two new programs which had not been signaled in Labor’s election arts policies. One was an Artists-in-Residence program, to bring arts practitioners into primary, secondary and tertiary schools to teach students and teachers about contemporary arts practice. Another was the $200,000 a year over four years ArtStart program just being rolled out now, through an Australia Council competitive grants process. This is intended to assist Australian arts graduates with grants of up to $10,000 to help them establish a business or gain employment as an artist. This is not the same as the ArtStart program in Labor’s election policy which proposed the adoption of artist friendly social security arrangements which would see better effort being made to assist artists in their career development.
Another outcome of the 2020 Summit, was the Government commitment to establishing an Indigenous Cultural Education and Knowledge Centre. Related to this is the idea of a National Indigenous Cultural Authority proposed by well known Indigenous lawyer Terri Janke, to set standards for appropriate use of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property, including payment of royalties, maintaining cultural integrity and ensuring attribution. The Indigenous Australian Art Commercial Code of Conduct will be trialed over the next two years to test whether a voluntary government code will provide much needed protection for Indigenous artists against exploitation. Meanwhile significant additional funding has been provided to further support Indigenous art and craft centres.
While there are items on the list still left to tick off, the above makes substantial headway in fulfilling Labor’s election promises and beyond. We will watch with interest what next Peter Garrett will pull out of the policy hat. Watch for the small print in the arts section of the papers.
