Australia Yearbook - 2001

558 Year Book Australia 2001
within contemporary economic systems relying
essentially on private markets as the principal
means of resource allocation. This long debate
has had many strands, but the argument which
emerged most convincingly was one proposing
that the arts are a case of market failure, i.e. that
the arts give rise to externalities or public-good
benefits which are not reflected in market
transactions and which therefore provide a
prima facie justification for government
intervention. 26 Discussion of these issues in
Australia was assisted by the fact that one of the
first studies anywhere in the world which
attempted to give empirical substance to these
theoretical hypotheses was undertaken in this
country. In a research project funded by the
Australia Council and carried out in 1982, Glenn
Withers and I set out to identify the nature of the
external benefits from the arts and to quantify the
community’s willingness to pay for arts support
out of their taxes. Although limited in scope and
specific to its time period, this study yielded
strong support for the existence of a viable
economic rationale for government assistance to
the arts. Since the rationale was derived from the
same basic economic paradigm which underlay
the ‘economic rationalist’ ideology of the day, our
results were helpful in aligning arts funding with
the prevailing economic orthodoxy. Despite
changing times, the essential conclusions of this
research are still relevant today and their
implications might be regarded as even more
important, given the increased prominence of the
same orthodoxy at the present time. 27
In 1992 the Commonwealth Government set in
train a process aimed at formulating a new
cultural policy. The process culminated in
1994 with the release of a document entitled
Creative Nation, which at the time represented
one of the most comprehensive and
forward-looking statements of government policy
towards culture that had been seen anywhere in
the world. 28 It was grounded firmly in the
proposition that the creative industries could be
seen as a significant force in generating
employment and economic growth; indeed in the
leadup to the finalisation of the document a
major conference was organised by the then
Department of Communications and the Arts, the
title of which, ‘Creating Culture: the New Growth
Industries’, reflected this prevailing mood. 29
Creative Nation adopted a broad view of the
cultural sector in which the arts occupied a
central position, not just in their own right but
also as the foundation upon which the wider
cultural industries, especially those dependent on
new communications technologies, were
built. Although criticised in some quarters as
being longer on rhetoric than on concrete
proposals, Creative Nation reflected an
optimistic and expansionist mood about
Australian culture and about the future
potential of the creative arts in the new
information age. Despite the fact that the
document itself is still strongly identified
with Paul Keating, the Prime Minister under
whose aegis it was produced, the thrust of
Creative Nation has remained broadly
consistent with the approach to arts policy
espoused by subsequent conservative
governments.
In concluding our review of the policy context
of arts funding over the twentieth century, let
us consider some issues within the arts: What
have been some of the factors affecting the
distribution of funding between art forms?
The first point to note is that historically
funding of organisations has tended to
dominate over support for individual artists.
At the time the original Australian Council for
the Arts was set up in 1968, the symphony
orchestras and the opera and ballet
companies were already well established, and
the new Council saw a particular priority in
consolidating and extending the network of
State drama companies. The fact that the IAC
enquiry of 1975–76 dealt with the performing
arts continued this focus on organisational
support. By the early 1980s, the artforms
representing ‘initial creative artists’—
literature, the visual arts, the crafts—had
come to feel that they were receiving an
inequitable share of Australia Council funds
compared with the performing arts. Their
concerns led to the establishment of a
Committee of Inquiry into the situation of the
individual artist in Australia, which produced
its report entitled The Artist in Australia Today
in 1983. The report’s recommendations led to
the introduction of some new measures to
improve the working conditions of practising
professional artists, but the hoped-for shift in
Australia Council funding towards initial
creative artists did not materialise.
Nevertheless, the Individual Artists Inquiry did
at least spawn a series of surveys of the
economic circumstances of artists, conducted
at roughly five-yearly intervals, which have
drawn periodic attention to declining real
incomes and the lack of professional
recognition suffered by writers, visual artists,
composers, actors, musicians and other