Arts Funding and the Cultural Wars: the continuing saga

Abstract

Cultural policy and arts policy in particular has been a site of much contention and discussion in Australia over the past decade. The events of the past 2 years have taken this to another level and shown major ideological schisms in the present political approach. While the established arts sector has been protected and consolidated, the emerging sector, individual artists, and small organisations have all been negatively impacted. These policy changes suggest a retreat to a different cultural period; a time when Australia based its national identity on its English colonial founders. What this period highlights also though is the vulnerability of artists, the political framing of arts pra..