Australia Yearbook - 2001

Chapter 12—Culture and recreation 559
practitioners in Australia; these studies have
provided empirical support for arguments that arts
policy in Australia needs to do more to address
problems faced by individual artists. 30
The matter of public funding of performing
companies as distinct from individual artists, and
indeed of large companies as distinct from small
ones, has resurfaced with the publication of the
most recent inquiry into an aspect of arts funding
in Australia, namely the review of the major
performing organisations carried out in 1998–99 by
a committee chaired by Helen Nugent. Although
composed entirely of business people, the
committee did not adopt a solely
business-oriented approach to its task. It
recognised that the essential purpose of these
opera, dance, theatre and music companies is to
produce art, and its recommendations were aimed
at securing the economic foundations on which
those processes are built. 31 The result has been
the injection of significant new funds (about $43m
in Federal funding over four years) to support the
major performing groups. Not surprisingly, there
have been calls for similar attention to be paid now
to the needs of smaller companies and of artforms
outside the performing arts.
Conclusions
In tracing the development of public funding for
the arts since Federation, we can see some
patterns emerging which give a lead to likely
directions in the new millennium. First, the
consolidation of the public sector’s role in arts
funding which has occurred during the last
quarter of the twentieth century now seems
secure, and it is unlikely that that role will
disappear. Second, however, the way in which it
is discharged may well go through furthur
transformations. In part these will be caused by
technological change, as new means for
production, dissemination and consumption of
art affect the ways in which the public interest in
this field can or should be asserted. In part also
these transformations will arise through changing
partnerships in the delivery of arts support
between public and private sectors. Furthermore,
shifts between levels of government are likely to
occur, with the possibility of a further relative
decline at the centre and increased involvement
at the periphery; if so, this would be consistent
with an apparent worldwide trend towards
greater cultural diversity and more active
expression of localised cultural values, especially
in the face of what are seen as the homogenising
influences of globalisation.
Finally, whatever the ebb and flow of political
fortunes at the federal level in Australia, it is
likely that a broad-ranging Commonwealth
government cultural policy will evolve
further in the years ahead, necessarily
containing as one of its elements a specific
stance towards public support for the arts. If
so, there seems little doubt that such an arts
policy will continue to be predicated on the
threefold objectives noted earlier—a drive
for the highest possible standards in artistic
creativity, innovation and expression; an
opening up of enjoyment of the arts to as
wide an audience as possible free from
economic and locational barriers; and a
further enhancement of the arts’ unique role
in defining what it means to be Australian.
Endnotes
1 For further discussion of the cultural
industries as a series of concentric circles
centred on the arts, see Richard E. Caves,
Creative Industries: Contracts between Art
and Commerce (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000), and David Throsby,
Economics and Culture, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch. 7.
2 Unless otherwise stated, statistical
information in this section is derived from
the Commonwealth Year Books of various
years, beginning with No. 1 for 1901–07.
Throughout this paper, financial amounts are
quoted at current prices, unless indicated
otherwise. Constant price series are
expressed in 1998–99 prices, with
adjustments being made using the six capital
cities CPI.
3 See further in Anon, ‘‘Michael Massey
Robinson’’, in The Australian Encyclopaedia
(Sydney: Australian Geographic, 1996,
pp. 2599–2600).
4 Adjustment of historical monetary amounts
to terms of today’s prices is problematical.
Nevertheless we can say that an amount of
£4,000 in 1908 is the equivalent of roughly
$350,000 today. In 1998–99 prices,
government expenditure on the NSW Art
Gallery in 1908 was about $0.22 per head of
population in the State at that time,
compared with an expenditure by the State
Government on all art galleries in NSW of
around $5 per head in 1998–99.