Page 3746 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 9 December 1992
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I turn now to aspects of the statement accompanying the release of the 1993 major grants. The first point I would like to address is the strategy of the ACT Cultural Council. In the Minister's words, its quest is "to set a vision of what kind of cultural life the Territory should have, and then setting out to achieve that vision". I believe that this is an ambitious undertaking, Madam Speaker, which I trust does not fail because the council approached the challenge with too high an expectation.
I think it is fair to say that the arts in Canberra always have made more of our national capital status than our population's capacity - even at 300,000 people - to sustain various artforms. We have been fortunate to date to be reasonably well financed. These expectations cannot continue to the same degree under self-government because the arts, like everything else in Canberra, must accept the financial realities of standing on their own feet. We must accept that there are limits to the public sector's capacity to fund. For example, and purely as an example, would an opera lover in, say, Dubbo, really expect to be provided with a local opera company? Why, then, should some Canberrans expect the same range of artistic choice as enjoyed by Sydney or by Melbourne, with their much more sustainable millions-plus populations?
Or can we afford in these recessionary times to duplicate what exists already? For example, can we really justify a regional art gallery when we have the National Gallery of Australia sitting beside the lake? Who would fund it? Which local artists who cannot now exhibit in local private galleries would display their works there? It seems to me that we have had too many ACT governments that wished to act the benefactor, the patron like the great private patrons of the past, generally in the worthy cause of bringing culture to the people. I submit that we have frequently failed because, while such patrons as the Medici encouraged artists for their own gratification, at least the Medici used their own money. All too often ACT government funding - that is, taxpayers' money, ratepayers' money - has ended up similarly being used to gratify an exclusive few.
Politicians must take a substantial share of the blame for this lamentable state of affairs, because the attitude in times of plenty has been ultrapragmatic, something along the lines of, "There might be a few votes in it, so who cares if they waste it? Football is my scene. I will not be around to see the results". It is therefore encouraging to read the Minister's caution in his statement:
... the Cultural Council is looking to 1993 to be a year for change ... Past practices, where organisations have come to expect a certain level of support, will not necessarily be maintained.
The promise implicit in this reassuring statement is that the attitude is no longer valid that any publicly funded artform in Canberra must run at a loss and therefore is entitled to a lifelong subsidy. It remains to be seen how successful the Cultural Council will be in overcoming these well-entrenched expectations and further, I suggest, Madam Speaker, in preventing a new, equally expectant group of organisations taking the place of the original cast.
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