Budget cuts deal blow to culture and Aus image overseas

A Report in The Australian says that “PHILISTINES!” cried former foreign minister Alexander Downer, to news that the Rudd Government is to axe Australia on the World Stage, the fund he established last year.

The cut accounts for one-third of a $57.25 million budget reduction to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Downer took almost 10 years, from when he first set up the Australia International Cultural Council in 1998, to convince Treasury to release a sizeable chunk of money for international arts programs targeting festivals.

Although the Australia Council has a range of programs aimed at international audience and market development, Downer’s plan was to make the AICC and its support group, the Commission for International Cultural Promotion, “Australia’s key vehicles for cultural diplomacy”, as they put it.

Planned events included “major cultural promotions in key countries including China, Indonesia and the US”. A Senate inquiry into the role of cultural exports that would convey to the world “a positive image of Australia” was set up early in 2007, but that report was pre-empted when, in the May budget, the AICC was given a budget boost from $1 million a year to $5 million for the next four years.

At the discretion of the council – chaired by Downer, and including National Gallery of Australia director Ron Radford, Hetti Perkins, the senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts at the Art Gallery of NSW, and Carol Henry, the chief executive of Art Exhibitions Australia – projects were to be funded that would “project an appropriate and contemporary image of Australia, boost our cultural exports, promote Australian tourism and education and support the promotion of indigenous art”.

DFAT has confirmed the AICC will continue to exist, but cuts in the Australia on the World Stage budget suggest it will have to adjust its role.

“No decision has been taken on the future of the council,” a DFAT statement said cryptically.

It is to be supposed that Foreign Minister Stephen Smith will move into the role of chairman of AICC. He hasn’t yet commented on the decision to cut a program that was, in effect, a personal achievement for his predecessor, Downer. Arts Minister Peter Garrett did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.

Downer is adamant that the cuts, which were announced by Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, are narrow-minded and small-minded.

“Australia on the World Stage was never the matter of the remotest controversy,” Downer says. “I believe they are philistines and they have no understanding and no desire to understand the importance of promoting culture internationally.”

Downer’s frustration at the trashing of a program designed to “build up the image of Australia not just as a good economic power but as a cultural power” is echoed, in more moderate terms, by Russell Trood, who was a Liberal member of the Senate inquiry into the nature and conduct of public diplomacy.

That committee, which was bipartisan, handed down a report in August that recommended better exploitation of cultural diplomacy as part of a broader program of public diplomacy.

A response to vigorous arguments in submissions from arts organisations such as the Australia Council, AsiaLink and Film Australia, the report was well received by the arts community and by DFAT because it dealt with ideas, not just economics.

Its first recommendation was that “DFAT should devote appropriate resources to develop a capacity to conduct and evaluate regular assessments of attitudes towards Australia and its foreign policy”.

Recommendations pointed towards an understanding that culture and the artists who create it are ready-made ambassadors in an environment where every resource must be used to enhance relations with other countries and in other markets.

The Senate committee will reconvene when parliament resumes next month, and Trood says one of the first items of business will be to seek the Government’s response.

“This is a pre-emptive attack on that report,” he says, “and it’s regrettable.

“The money for Australia on the World Stage was the most significant infusion of funds into the area of cultural diplomacy for some time, so it was a very welcome commitment from government.

“The Senate committee thought culture to be a very important instrument of foreign policy, and nothing has changed my mind on that point.”

A Report by The Mole from The Australian