As Eltham notes, mine has been one of the voices seeking to reframe the cultural policy debate. Although he and I wouldn’t agree on everything, we’re certainly coming from the same space. It’s very difficult to judge whether what is now becoming quite a well known critique is having much impact on government – in the funding bodies, and in Peter Garrett’s office.

Incidentally, I wonder what happened to the promise that the government would respond to the 2020 summit by the end of last year? If anything was going to indicate whether or not the Rudd government actually had some sort of integrated stance on cultural policy, it would have been the response to the Creative Australia stream report. But, intriguingly, the website seems to have rewritten history – a response is now promised “in the New Year”. There’s also not much sign of the webpage being used to facilitate further “submission of new ideas”. While I was among the (guarded) cynics at the time the 2020 summit was held, I nevertheless think it’s essential to continue to highlight the fact that it really will have been a stunt if its deliberations and recommendations are allowed to disappear. Something more definite in terms of a date by which the government would respond, and an opportunity to make submissions on the report might be starters. We’ll see.

But it may also be time for those concerned with cultural policy and working within the creative industries to take the iniative and begin to formulate concrete proposals in specific policy domains. I think that accords well both with the spirit of the observation that a lot of creative innovation happens from the bottom up and with the likelihood that we’re not going to see any big picture thinking from the present government.