Artistic freedom should be defended

If there were any doubts that the conduct of the Minister for the Arts had entered the realm of the indefensible, he dispelled them in an interview on national radio when he talked to Fran Kelly on ABC on the morning of Friday 14 March. When asked whether his position would go to the extremes of forcing artists to accept funding from companies to which they objected such as those in the tobacco industry, businesses which the Labor party has decided are inappropriate sources of donations, the Minister stated:

I myself don’t think arts companies should reject bona fide arts sponsorship from commercially sound prospective partners on political grounds.

The implication of this is that the Minister for the Arts becomes an enforcer for ethically dubious organisations in their efforts to assert control over the arts. They will be encouraged to make arts organisations offers they can’t refuse, and if they do reject them the Minister will be standing by to change their minds.

Losing artistic independence

Threatening arts organisations with cuts to their funding if they do not toe the party line is a direct and open challenge to artists everywhere, exposing them to the removal of the funding they receive and have to live upon if they say things in their work that their sponsors do not like, or they conduct themselves in ways which the Minister does not approve. While this may have directly harmful effects on particular artists targeted under this policy, it will also have more widespread, deadening effects on artistic production across the nation. Self-censorship, as cultural producers start to stop expressing themselves and addressing issues in ways which might endanger corporate interests, will grow.

This view of the arts sees it not as an important community good, benefitting the public as an essential part of social, cultural and political discussion and aesthetic exchange, but as an addendum to corporate interests: it exists to legitimise and justify the activities of large businesses, and the aims of the arts must be bent to concord with those of its major corporate sponsors.

The irony is that this major attack on the freedom of expression of cultural producers is coming from a person who has claimed to have its defence as his raison d’etre and his goal as the nation’s attorney general. The hypocrisy of the Attorney in claiming to defend freedom of expression and advance the interests of artists and others to say what they want in the public sphere on the one hand, while moving to undermine artistic autonomy on the other and police the sponsorship agreements of artists, is nothing short of breathtaking.