Dancing with the bear: the politics of Australian national cultural policy

Abstract

My research topic is an investigation into the policy beliefs that drive the activities of Australia’s national arts advocacy coalitions. My research question is: how have the beliefs and activities of Australia’s arts advocacy coalitions constrained Australia’s national cultural policy? I apply public policy-making theory (the Advocacy Coalition Framework) and cultural policy theory to this question. As neither public policy nor cultural policy theory tell us about how cultural policy is developed, my thesis contributes to this scholarship and provides Australia’s arts sector with insights into this policymaking process and their impact on it. My case studies analyse three national arts policies: Creative Nation (1994); Creative Australia (2013); and Senator George Brandis’ cuts to the Australia Council in 2015 to establish his own arts fund. My research includes semi-structured interviews with 45 past and present coalition members, a survey of organisations involved in the mobilisations against Brandis’ intervention and content analysis of key documentation. My findings are that national arts policy is constrained by contests over policy beliefs. These contests take place within the frame of governments’ preference for a patronage policy mode that supports the subsidised arts. This patronage approach and the commodification of cultural policy constrain attempts to develop a broader national cultural policy. During the period defined by my inquiry the outcomes of these contests over policy beliefs have valorised excellence at the expense of access, designated citizens as consumers of cultural artefacts and strengthened structural inequality within the subsidised arts sector. Also contested have been the policy preferences that require arts funding decisions to be made at arm’s length from government by an artist’s peers. During the period under inquiry, these contests have often been triggered by governments’ attempts to constrain these policy preferences in the interests of greater control over arts funding.