Tony Burke to launch Labor’s cultural policy

Tony Burke’s cultural policy isn’t only about money, but the arts sector will be looking for the dollar signs.

Arts Minister Tony Burke plays guitar in his office at Parliament House. Picture: Gary Ramage

Tony Burke is due to launch his national cultural policy in Melbourne on Monday and has chosen as the venue the Esplanade Hotel, on the waterfront at St Kilda. Famous for its live music, the Espy has a storied place in Australian entertainment, and no doubt sets the right tone for the music-loving Arts Minister.

It’s curious, though, that Burke has avoided Canberra for such an important and long-awaited announcement. Simon Crean launched Labor’s last cultural policy, Creative Australia, at the National Press Club in Canberra in 2013. Paul Keating as prime minister brought forth his Creative Nation policy in 1994 at the National Gallery of Australia.

In the current environment, a gallery launch would be awkward. The NGA is so starved of cash that its chairman, Ryan Stokes, has warned it may have to close its doors two days a week. Just across the way, the National Library of Australia is running out of cash to keep its hugely popular search engine, Trove, fully operational.

While Burke and Anthony Albanese have made encouraging noises about fixing these problems, they still have not done anything about it. Burke has already ruled out funding increases for them in the cultural policy, leaving such considerations until the federal budget.

Similarly, the cultural policy won’t include the very generous location incentives paid to Hollywood studios, a measure that has implications for local screen producers. The former government paid $30m, for example, to lure to Australia Ryan Gosling’s The Fall Guy – the movie that closed the Sydney Harbour Bridge last weekend.

Taken together, a funding boost for the national institutions and film incentives would amount to tens of millions of dollars – quite a splash. Without them, Burke’s launch could be rather short of major funding announcements. No matter what else he is able to conjure in his policy, eyes will be on the dollar sign and how much money he has been able to wrangle for the cultural sector.

To put things in perspective, Crean’s Creative Australia came with $235m ($289m in today’s money). And Keating pushed the boat out with Creative Nation in 1994, spending $250m ($512m).

So what will be in the new policy? Unconfirmed rumours speak of a new national strategy to develop the music industry, and a new suite of fellowships for senior artists. As Burke’s stated priority, First Nations arts and culture will almost certainly be a winner.

And there will be some significant initiatives that won’t cost a lot of money. The government already has signalled some kind of minimum Australian content rule for the global streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+. Such a measure would ensure the multinationals make a fair contribution to Australian stories on screen.

The Australia Council, too, is set for a revamp. As already announced, the arts funding agency will take on the responsibilities of Creative Partnerships Australia, which promotes private-sector support for the arts through philanthropy and sponsorships.

It’s likely, too, that the Australia Council’s remit will be broadened to include the commercial arts and entertainment sector, as well as the subsidised arts.

How this will work in practice isn’t clear, but it makes sense that the creative sector should be addressed as a whole ecology, comprising many different species. At the least, a cultural policy should be a guiding document for the sector’s future development and strategic allocation of resources.

Burke has outlined his policy’s five themes or pillars: First Nations arts, cultural diversity, the role of artists as creative and economic producers, strong institutions, and audience development.

More ambitious is his stated intention to make connections between the creative arts and other functions of government, such as health, education and foreign affairs and trade.

The potential is huge: imagine music education being made available to every schoolchild, or the therapeutic benefits of art and music being deployed in the health and aged-care system. None of these things is new or radical, but rarely are they rolled out in a consistent way that will ensure long-term success.

Burke will not be able to avoid the immediate needs of the arts sector as it emerges from the pandemic and into the bracing winds of high inflation.

Industry body Live Performance Australia reports earnings among its members are down 30-35 per cent on average. Last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported a drop in revenue for the arts and recreation sector – the largest percentage fall of any major industry – citing cost-of-living pressures on households. People are going to shows, but not as often and not spending as much.

That comes on top of other demands for attention: from the embattled small to medium companies, to the woefully low incomes for writers, an acute skills shortage in the sector, and the dire circumstances of our national institutions. Labor scrapped the Coalition’s $20m extension to the Covid-relief RISE program, but so far has not made a single grant from its promised Live Performance Support Fund, announced in September.

Burke has said, often, that the arts suffered a decade of neglect under the Coalition. The refrain is starting to sound a little thin. On Monday, the test for Burke is whether he and Labor can do better.