Australia: a nation at risk

Obviously art isn’t just the social frosting. Renaissance Florence is a case in point.

Art is everywhere, in just about everything we see or touch in our daily lives. Early in June 2005, the Hivos Culture Fund organised an event called Beyond Diversity: Moving towards Millenium Development Goal No 9. Its topic was the importance of supporting art and culture and its findings revealed that:

• the more people suffer violence and poverty, the more art they will practice and the more support they should receive;
• in times of war and poverty, when the most basic human needs are least satisfied, people create;
• when cultural life is vibrant, the brain drain is reduced: intelligent young people stay inside their society, and migration to the "rich" world goes down;
• arts and culture are the main force against social stagnation;
• culture is now a major source of income. Supporting cultural production in developing countries creates an economic counterforce and protects local income;
• those without power are supported and given voice by men and women coming from the arts and culture sector;
• the definition of what development is always comes from the cultural world; and
• political projects fail if their cultural component is rejected.

Columnist Tamim Ansary pointed out that “Reading, writing and arithmetic are probably enough if you want to produce a nation of competent clerks. But developing leaders, visionaries and entrepreneurs? That’s another matter.”

We know that many Australian artists (the creators of our culture) are living on the poverty line: it is well documented in Throsby & Hollister’s report Don’t Give up Your Day Job.

We also know that we have “lost” up to one million younger Australians to the opportunities (PDF 106KB) they can find only by living and working in exile.

Perhaps the ongoing loss of the nation’s “A” grade students prompted the Australian Government to conduct its 2004 Senate Inquiry into Australian Expatriates. The report is worth reading for its discussions of the extent of the Australian diaspora: the variety of factors driving more Australians to live overseas; the costs, benefits and opportunities presented by the phenomenon; the needs and concerns of overseas Australians; the measures taken by other comparable countries to respond to the needs of their expatriates; and ways in which Australia could better use its expatriates to promote our economic, social and cultural interests.

Although other countries are quickly realising the importance of their creative sector to their societies in both monetary and, more importantly, in non monetary terms, it appears that Australia’s lack of appreciation of our creative industries is as enduring as the national delusion that we are a country of cultural significance. And it certainly doesn’t seem to have shifted in the last 50 years. In 1963 architect and writer Robin Boyd described this ignorance of the arts and the poverty of establishment tastes in both architecture and popular culture in his book The Australian Ugliness.

As recently as September last year the then treasurer Peter Costello responded to a call by Labor to support artists on welfare by saying:

Poor old artists: they are on welfare and they do not have enough time to paint! We had better intervene! Let me tell you what you do have to do if you are on welfare. Here are your obligations: you have to keep a job diary, which would ask you to record 10 job search efforts every fortnight. I do not think that would get in the way of the next Mona Lisa.

How creative would our politicians be, living on $15,500.00 per year?

Future Directions international discussed the need to strengthen Australian identity in their 2007 publication Australia 2050: An Examination of Australia's Condition, Outlook, and Options for the First Half of the 21st Century. It suggests that: