Cultural policy in Australia: institutions, audiences and communities

In this respect, cultural planning, like community arts sets out to nurture the creative practices of those who are often marginalised by the discourses of excellence. However, cultural planning also aggressively asserts a cultural industry agenda and seeks to fuse within local government the two principal props of the arts organisational structure - the commercial and the public.

State governments have has also sought to rationalise their involvement in the arts. This rationalisation has occurred at the same time as most have attempted to gain the symbolic and electoral benefits believed to result from giving in-principle (if not increased financial) support to the cultural industries and from taking a proactive, entrepreneurial role in arts promotion. With State governments assuming a more entrepreneurial involvement in festivals, special events and mega cultural development, it is clear that many of the most significant government interventions in cultural production and consumption are occurring outside the arts portfolio. For instance, almost all state governments have enthusiastically embraced the development of cultural precincts and festival marketplaces on redundant state government owned land. Arguably, such initiatives (the province of urban planning and development departments) will have a profound effect on the nature of creative practice in cities and states as well as on the operations of arts organisations.

Not only do changes in the arts environment affect cultural practice and the nature of creative expression, they also have profound social and economic consequences which are not always immediately obvious. For example, cultural policy was an important dimension in Keating government attempts to reconcile relationships with Australia's Indigenous people. At the same time, however, cultural policy can also be a significant source of exclusion, domination and appropriation. The arts play a role in the celebration of cultural diversity, and in the definition and expression of national, regional and local identity.

Moreover, the "cultural industries" comprise one of the fastest growing sectors of the Australian economy at a time of considerable economic change and restructuring. These factors have presented unexpected challenges to the arts funding status quo. Ironically, challenges to the arts hierarchy have come both from those arguing the unsustainablity and elitism of the high art/popular culture split as well as from advocates of neo-liberal economics who believe the market should be the principal arbiter of value. The recent shift to talking about the "creative" rather than the "cultural" industries is relevant in this context. At its most simplistic this shift in terminology is intended to transcend the hierarchical assumptions associated with the word culture.

It may well be an unconventional alliance of left and right ideologies that, ultimately, undermines the exalted place of "art" on the agenda of governments. Perhaps scrutinising these inter-relationships could be the starting point for a reignited conversation on a national cultural policy.