Australia Yearbook - 2001

Chapter 12—Culture and recreation 551
complement of 72 full-time players. By 1950,
when the West Australian Symphony Orchestra
was formed, all States had orchestras of their
own, giving live concert series as well as
broadcasts. The funding levels for these activities
are difficult to identify, since the revenues and
expenses associated with the orchestras simply
formed part of the Commission’s overall financial
operations. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that
the ABC’s funding of the orchestras has been a
major element in public support for the arts in
modern Australia. 8
Before concluding our coverage of the first period
of arts funding, we should refer to film. The feature
film industry in Australia flourished at various
times over the period, beginning with The Kelly
Gang in 1905–06, possibly the first full-length
feature made anywhere in the world. Between
1900 and 1930—the silent era—about 160
commercial feature films were produced, and a
further 115 were made between 1930 and 1960.
Although a National Film Board was established by
the Federal Government in 1945, it and its
successors were concerned with film as a medium
of information, and it was not until the late 1960s
that initiatives aimed at setting up means for
government support for film as an artform came
into being, a matter to which we return below.
The great expansion: 1968–1990
The first half of the 1970s is sometimes seen as
marking Australia’s ‘cultural renaissance’, a period
when the creative arts blossomed throughout the
country as never before, thanks to enlightened
public patronage. In fact, the impetus to
rationalise and expand Commonwealth
government support for the arts originated
several years earlier. Towards the end of 1967
Prime Minister Harold Holt announced the
establishment of the first Australian Council for
the Arts, which was to distribute grants and
to advise the government on cultural matters. 9
It was set up not as a statutory body, but as a
committee acting under terms of reference with
nine members and a chairman, Dr H.C. (‘Nugget’)
Coombs, who had been instrumental in
persuading the government to embark upon this
new venture. The Council began operating in July
1968 with a budget for 1968–69 of $1.5m, a sum
which, though small by the international
standards of the day, was nevertheless a
considerable increase on previous levels of
support. 10
Following the establishment of the Council by the
Federal Government, the various States moved in
turn to set up their own bodies to provide
cultural support within their own
jurisdictions. One of the first to act in this
respect was Queensland which established a
portfolio for Cultural Activities within its
Ministry for Education and Cultural Activities
in 1968. By the mid 1970s all States had
either a department, a statutory authority, or
an advisory committee to handle their
expanding arts funding activities. Meanwhile,
at the federal level, successive Coalition
governments after 1967 continued to
support the Council for the Arts, together
with the Commonwealth Literary Fund and
the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board
mentioned above, the Committee for
Assistance to Australian Composers, which
had been established by Harold Holt in 1967,
and the Interim Committee for the Film and
Television School, which was inaugurated by
John Gorton in 1969. Despite these efforts,
in the election campaign of 1972 Gough
Whitlam was able to point to Prime Minister
William McMahon’s apparent lack of interest
in these areas, as evidenced by his assigning
responsibility for the arts, along with
Aborigines and the environment, to his most
junior minister.
The Whitlam government elected in 1972
moved promptly to reconstitute the
Australian Council for the Arts, rationalising
the disparate collection of Commonwealth
administrative arrangements noted above.
The new Council comprised seven Boards
covering Aboriginal arts, craft, film and
television, literature, music, theatre
(including opera and dance) and visual arts.
Its financial allocation in the first Labor
budget in 1973 was, at about $15m, roughly
twice the Commonwealth’s aggregate
expenditure on the arts in the previous
year. 11 The Council was also asked to
recommend on a more permanent structure
for government administration in the cultural
field, and its report on this matter was
adopted by Cabinet in November 1973.
Legislation to establish the Australia Council,
as it was now to be called, was introduced in
1974, and the Council assumed its new role
as a statutory authority early in 1975. 12
Despite the ups and downs of political
fortune over the ensuing quarter of a
century, the Australia Council has survived as
the Federal Government’s arms-length arts
funding body to the present day. It has been
overseen by more than a dozen Ministers, a