Award winning Greek Australian author Christos Tsiolkas, along with philanthropist Janet Holmes a Court, and historian Clare Wright, has been appointed by the federal Labor government to assist in restarting the nation’s culture policy.
The new Labor government has unveiled a seven-person expert advisory group that will provide strategic advice in the development of its new National Cultural Policy. The group will sift through more than 1200 public submissions before tabling its report by December.
The government is hoping to have legislation drafted by the first half of 2023.
Australia Council chief executive Adrian Collette, writer and youth arts worker Alysha Herrmann, choreographer Sinsa Mansell and visual artist Kitty Taylor have also been appointed to the expert advisory group, which will sit atop the five review panels – each consisting of three figures from the cultural sphere – that were announced three weeks ago to “identify key issues and themes” raised through public consultations.
Collette said Arts Minister Tony Burke had told the group that “this is not an arts policy, it’s a cultural policy, a whole-of-government policy”. That means foreign affairs, health and education might also contribute to it, and benefit from it.
Labor’s has tried to embed cultural policy into broader Australian society with the Keating government’s Creative Nation in 1994, then the Gillard government’s Creative Australia in 2013. Each time though Labor was voted out of office and the incoming Coalition government abandoned those policies.
Clare Wright, professor of history at La Trobe University, said that developing a persuasive strategy is “about putting more money into the space”.
“We need to get away from the idea of history wars and culture wars, we need to end the militarisation of the metaphors that surround arts workers and cultural production,” she said.
The narrative around the arts has in recent decades become anchored on economic impact and employment rather than intrinsic cultural value, which is much harder to model and to quantify.
