Larvatus Prodeo

There’s been a bit of discussion about Arts Minister Peter Garrett’s defunding of the Australian National Academy of Music on another thread, so I think it probably warrants a post of its own.

Long time observers of arts and cultural policy in Australia won’t be surprised at various aspects of the debacle that constitutes the ANAM defunding. Several trends – all negative – are operating, and in effect what we have is bad policy by inertia, exacerbated by weak Ministerial decision making.

There’s the tension between excellence and equity, and Garrett arguably tried to defend his decision to close ANAM by a bit of dog whistling in his choice of words – “elite musical training”. Of course, given that little is known about what Melbourne University will actually offer through the Australian Institute of Music Performance, or what qualifications will be required of potential students, there’s not much to explicitly defend here, even if one were to accept the implicit premise. In his press conference, Garrett embarrassingly could give little or no information about the proposed replacement for ANAM, which is ironic given that ANAM’s supposed sin was one of ommission in reporting and planning. That takes us to the second default policy setting which has influenced this decision – the endless bureaucratic hurdles any institution has to jump in order to receive and retain federal funding. To put it in a nutshell, ANAM’s failure to meet the requirements set by the funding body appears to be more a matter of poor communication than anything else. What we have here is a case of bureaucrats mercilessly enforcing the letter of the law and ignoring the spirit – the decision actually acts to frustrate the aims of the policy.

Those of us whose hopes for a reinvigorated cultural policy from Labor have already proved to be in vain won’t be surprised by yet another disappointment. Continue reading ‘Peter Garrett and the ANAM defunding debacle’