Think the Voice was bad?

Alexander Voltz I Sky News I 28 July 2024

Labor’s National Cultural Policy lays the foundations for another raid on Australia’s colonial history

You may have heard that Jim Chalmers’ budget earlier this year offers something of a win for artists, with funding handed out to, among others, the National Institute of Dramatic Art, the Australian Ballet School and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.

This fiscal support is part of Labor’s five-year national cultural policy, which it, somewhat erroneously, calls Revive: A Place for Every Story, a Story for Every Place. ?

I have been investigating Revive since its inception, particularly since the middle of 2023, when I became the founding Music Editor at Quadrant.

As SkyNews.com.au readers may not be so familiar with the policy’s measures, my intention in this article is to shed just some light on Revive – and its many problems.?

To do this, I draw on those submissions from industry and creative practitioners made to the Australian Senate’s ongoing inquiry into the policy, the concluding report of which was supposed to be published in June.?

That report commenced in February 2023 and is now, for whatever reason, not expected to conclude until March 2025 – that is, potentially not until after the next federal election.

At this point, I am left wondering if the Albanese Government is, in fact, attempting to filibuster the inquiry.

Its motivations for doing so may quickly become clear. ?

Before beginning in earnest, I thought it amusing to include this prelude: would you have guessed that some submissions to the Senate have, in fact, condemned Revive for not doing enough to address, of all things, climate change?

Indeed, Monash University has just wrapped up a composition competition, “Sonic Vocabularies: Climate, Weather and Music”, which awarded $12,000 to the applicant composer whose proposed piece of music best addresses the “climate crisis.”?

Or, for the enterprising Sydney Conservatorium of Music pupil, there exists an undergraduate course called “Music, Environment and Climate Change”, which teaches that “climate change…is destined to have a major influence on the lives of subsequent generations” and that music “may help in solving environmental problems of the future”.

And a course of this calibre, naturally, would not be complete unless a portion of it was taught through “lectures and a workshop” by “Indigenous Australian cultural custodians”.

Sadly, this is the sorry state that some Australian arts quarters find themselves in.

Revive is broken into five key policy pillars: (1) “First Nations First”, (2) “A Place for Every Story”, (3) “Centrality of the Artist”, (4) “Strong Cultural Infrastructure”, and (5) “Engaging the Audience”.

The first pillar, “First Nations First”, is exactly what it sounds like: the disproportionate prioritisation of Aboriginal Australian artists and their works.

Remember, Revive predates the Albanese Government’s defunct Voice to Parliament; it was a policy that was, like many others, positioned to aid the referendum’s passage.

In fact, when it comes to race-based policies, readers should still be concerned.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for the Arts Tony Burke during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Martin Ollman

One of Revive’s first actionable objectives remains the implementation, in full, of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Moreover, the policy wants to introduce “stand-alone legislation to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, including to address the harm caused by fake art”.

If this legislation is ever introduced into parliament, it must be carefully scrutinised; what, exactly, are examples of “First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions”, and how would additional protections (because, as readers know, copyright laws are already in effect) be applied to these?

Potentially, there exists a risk that the legislation could be used to clamp down on artworks that cause “harm” – or, in other words, artworks cause offence – to Aboriginal Australians, as well as those activist stakeholders attached to the Aboriginal industry.

Such artworks might include, for example, critical histories of Australia’s settlement which do not subscribe to the untruthful claims that the British attempted genocide against the Aboriginal race.

Attempting to get to the bottom of this, I sought the generous assistance of Senator Gerard Rennick, whose office submitted, among others, the following question on notice to the Office of the Arts in March:

“If a critical tract concerning Aboriginal history were written—perhaps by Geoffrey Blainey or Keith Windschuttle—and it was received poorly by Aboriginal interest groups then, under any new ‘stand-alone legislation’, could those interest groups take legal action?”

Needless to say, the office’s belated response did not provide a concrete answer.

Revive has already poured $53.8 million over four years into establishing two new “First Nations language centres,” striving to “increase the number of First Nations language speakers,” and is on track to fund an $80 million National Aboriginal Art Gallery in Alice Springs.

Major arts and communications institutions have, frustratingly, fawned over Revive’s race-based approaches.

For instance, the Australian Society of Authors told the Senate it was “encouraged” by the policy’s stand-alone legislation and has called for Australia’s inaugural Poet Laureate – yes, the policy introduces such a post – to be an Aboriginal Australian.??

Additionally, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) thinks Revive, through its new Music Australia body, can place even greater emphasis on Aboriginal music by funding even more Aboriginal Australian musicians.?

All in all, I am not sure that a cultural policy which puts Aboriginal Australian art “first” – effectively, above non-Aboriginal Australian art – is the direction we should want to go in.?

It seems to me that, ultimately, Revive is far more interested in contributing towards illiberal identity politics than it is in advancing Australian art and culture.

The policy’s second pillar, “A Place for Every Story”, makes much of “place” but very little of “every story”.

While the point of the pillar is to invest in programmes like regional touring and natural, historic and Aboriginal heritage sites – and, on this final score, we see that Revive’s support for the Aboriginal industry goes even beyond its first pillar – it does prompt the question of whether there is, in fact, a place for every story in Australia.

My experience has been that, currently, there is not; over the last couple of years, my knowledge of Australian artists whose work has been affected by ideological constraints has certainly increased.?

Even more worryingly, the Australian National Audit Office has told the Senate that the National Library of Australia is preparing to develop and implement a “deselection policy”.

According to Deakin University, a deselection policy involves the disposal of library materials, so as to ensure that the library’s collection is both “responsive to change” and “relevant to teaching, learning and research activities.”

To me, the concept of a library throwing out portions of its records seems completely antithetical to that institution’s charter of cataloguing and preserving knowledge.

If the National Library embarks down this route, can we be so certain that there is a place for every story in Australia?

Revive’s third pillar, “Centrality of the Artist”, also seems to miss the mark, especially when it declares that all artists are “workers”.

In Quadrant, I have previously argued that there are certain kinds of artists that are not really workers – at least, not in the now-dominant Marxist sense of the word.

It is true that some artists, for commercial purposes, produce art as if it were a product, but there are others who, inspired beyond reason by the human condition, pursue their craft as if it were a kind of spiritual vocation.

If Revive sought to support an enduring cultural legacy in Australia, it seems to me that the policy would have been better off pursuing the centrality of art and not the centrality of the artist.

In any case, the Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplace, which Revive establishes and which seeks to develop “codes of conduct” to address “issues of pay, safety and welfare”, threatens to further enforce ideological restrictions against artists and strangle institutions with red and green tape.

Symphony Services Australia (SSA), for example, told the Senate that it supports “industry-led education and training programs to improve workplace safety nationally and which complement the role and objectives of the Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces.”

But SSA also reported that it was “working towards reflecting diversity in [its] workforces and leadership” and that it believes “equity should be central to the arts and creative sectors.”

Needless to say, we should be most anxious if diversity and equity are at the heart of this Centre for Arts and Entertainment Workplaces.

Revive’s fourth pillar, “Strong Cultural Infrastructure”, is really what any national policy should predominantly concentrate on.

Governments should always provide artists with a stage upon which to perform, not a script from which to read.

One worthwhile initiative of Revive is its implementation of a triennial survey that seeks to gauge Australians’ “attitudes and experiences with arts and culture”, alleviating what Music ACT has described as a “dearth of data”.

However, the policy’s centralised approach towards cultural infrastructure has irked smaller, regional organisations.

The Greater Cobar Museum, the Prince Henry Hospital Nursing and Medical Museum, and the Willoughby District Historical Society have all told the Senate that, while Revive has allocated $11.8 million towards the National Gallery of Australia's Sharing the National Collective Initiative, an insurance fund to protect the local collections of regional museums is sorely needed.

Interestingly, Museums and Galleries of NSW noted that in 2022 the Australia Council for the Arts did not fund a single grant towards an identified heritage museum or a heritage related project.

It does seem to be the case that Revive, and the broader Office of the Arts, are only eager to invest in Australian heritage of a certain persuasion. ?

Further, the policy also makes little mention of how improvements can be made to Australia’s collapsing arts education programs, both in schools and universities.

Arts education programs have been in crisis since the Dawkins Revolution, which oversaw the closure of independent specialist arts colleges and their amalgamation with the now-radicalised universities.

Before investments in high-end arts institutions can deliver cultural dividends, Australians must have access to strong arts education programmes that are chiefly informed by craft practices, not ideologies or fashionable whims.

Revive’s fifth and final pillar, “Engaging the Audience”, bears little analysis; it is, more or less, a pillar that, for whatever reason, addresses issues that might reasonably have been addressed earlier in the policy.

Under this pillar, the policy seeks to deliver improvements to the National Broadband Network, reinstate funding and indexation for the ABC, and, as odd as it sounds, “invest in digital and media literacy to empower Australian children and young people to become critical, responsive and active citizens?online.”

In effect, Revive is just one big wish list; as the Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum wryly told the Senate, the policy is a “long list of actions which do not seem to have any linkages or interdependencies.”

Revive is another shining example of Labor Party policy: heavy on promises, light on detail.

It is a policy that has not aged well in light of the defeated Voice to Parliament referendum, and one that reveals a fundamental truth about the Albanese Government: that it regards art as a means to aiding some overall ideological end.

As a person who is extremely ambitious for Australian art, especially Australian art music, my view is that Revive serves as a distraction from, and not as a vehicle for, any actual national cultural progress.

Both it and its architects should be closely watched, and if the Albanese Government does introduce legislation that so much as suggests Australian copyright law should adopt racial considerations, strong opposition must be voiced.?

Alexander Voltz is a composer. As well as contributing to SkyNews.com.au, he is the founding Music Editor of Quadrant, and writes also for The Spectator and The Epoch Times. In 2022, he directed The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Concert, Australia’s largest musical tribute during the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. His music has been performed across the country and abroad.