In a way, as with so many other developments in new media, the user review replicates an underlying social pattern which is re-emerging as the closed media circuits of modernity fracture. The economics of film, like that of publishing and music, is typical of a certain enduring characteristic of the culture industries – the uncertainty of demand. While the quantum of production is closely tied to the number of screens, the art of predicting which films will make money is a most uncertain one. As a rule of thumb, one film has to make enough to subsidise a larger number which will lose money – what John Howkins calls the nobody knows principle. Producers can try to minimise risk by churning out sequels or franchise films, but the basic rule holds – it’s much harder to say which movie will find an audience than how many red cars will be sold.

So “word of mouth” has always been something that film marketers rely on, and indeed try to foster. And in a way, that’s what user reviews are.

There’s also a broader social phenomenon at work here – a decline in trust for authority figures of all kinds. In a real way, this is a positive development – because it represents a democratisation of knowledge. Though it’s not without its costs.

It does mean that there’s no particular premium given to the opinion of someone who writes a film column in a newspaper or a magazine – unless that writer has the ability to speak to readers on a basis of relative equality and to reveal their own personality. That may be why there’s much more affinity with film critics on tv – we all have opinions about whether we agree more with David or Margaret, or lament the absence from the box of Fenella Kernebone – because we feel we’ve come to know them as people. But there’s not much kudos for just being an “expert” on film – as with many other domains.

That holds whether we’re talking about mass market movies or niche indie or arthouse ones. There’s an interesting little stab at some research on the disjunction between the preferences of critics and scholars and film bloggers at Critical Culture. Pacze Moj finds quite a difference between -

“critical popularity” and “popular popularity”.

One of the factors, aside from what we might call the meta-level ones, that accounts for this phenomenon is that critics are often writing for a specialised audience. It’s well recognised, I think, that academic film criticism has its own vocabulary, interests and approaches – which is precisely why film is taught in universities. But I think it’s less well recognised that the classic newspaper film review has its own generic form, and its own view of what a “well made film” is which is quite distinct from that of vernacular audiences. Increasingly, it may be the case that a quite narrow set of criteria of value is being applied which appeals more to other film reviewers than to film viewers. And to editorial and journalistic canons of the “well made film review”…

For example, at the moment, I’m watching Doomsday on dvd. In many ways, it’s quite a silly film, but self-consciously so. It really is a postmodern pastiche of all sorts of post-apocalyptic science fiction action movies from the last few decades – making extremely conscious and obvious references to Highlander, Mad Max, The Matrix, and to other big box office flicks like Fight Club and Lord of the Rings. For critics, this is a turnoff. It’s also playing around with a bit of Shakespearian scene sequencing. It’s full of holes, and the mood and narrative pacing switches about a lot, but that’s part of the point.

For folk like me who like these films, all this is a positive source of pleasure… which is one reason why I’m likely to pick a film to watch based on the user reviews at IMDB and around the blogs and fansites.

The ‘age of neo-liberalism’, then, saw a shift of power towards finance capital and a harnessing of immaterial labour to the creation of intangible value. It saw a new logic of personality where constant change and the ability to network trumped security and the old bourgeois virtues. What’s also new about the era of globalisation is the world wide scope and reach of one economic system, and the geographical dispersion of networks of value creation – where, for instance, value can be added by design in the metropoles to products manufactured in the developing world. Within the developed world, we’ve had a bifurcated services economy – with Robert Reich‘s “symbolic analysts” at the top of the tree forming a highly mobile elite and personal services provided by low skilled and often immigrant labour (mobile in a somewhat different way) or younger workers whose mobility into high end occupations is temporal. It’s been the less skilled and relatively immobile workforce in the declining ‘productive’ sectors who’ve largely been the losers in this conjuncture – a fact which explains a lot about the politics of the last couple of decades.

One way of looking at the current financial crisis is that it’s the first major recession to hit the developed world since the value creation switch was flicked from the production of things to the creation of intangibles. If one takes a Schumpeterian view, the “creative destruction” now occurring should lead to the emergence of a new frontier of value creation. It’s difficult to say what that might be, and the inability to identify any emergent field for capital to till probably contributes to the (quite possibly mistaken) belief that a little bit of interventionism will soon return things to business as usual. There’s a big contrast with the last major downturn – where Paul Keating recognised that the evisceration of manufacturing jobs in Australia – despite its human cost – was a necessary condition for the insertion of this country into the global flows and networks where the action was. That also explained his focus on the Asian and Pacific region.

I was struck last week by some comments from consultant, film maker and creative industries theorist John Howkins, in a keynote he gave at the CCi Symposium held at QUT. Howkins drew a parallel between the sorts of work and commerce advocated by the evangelists of the knowledge economy and the phenomenon of sub-prime mortgages. In his own case, he discussed Handmade Films (of which he is the Chair) and its experience in having to secure a valuation of its assets in order to raise finance. The valuation is highly subjective – given that the inventory of the company is immaterial and intangible – films and the prospect of future films. Howkins remarked that the mode of accounting for value is analogous in the case of financial instruments and derivatives, low doc loans and the products of creative labour – all three are essentially projective and dependent on shifting patterns of demand, income and the ability at any stage to liquidify, commodify or realise intangible value.

Similarly, Howkins argued that the forms of work pioneered in the creative sectors – project based, fluid, subject to multiple reinvention and recombination and reassemblage – have their parallels in the working lives of those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Returning to the point I made earlier, there’s a dichotomy between mobility and immobility which parallels the division between material and immaterial value. We do live in a services economy when both those who are profiting from intangible products and those who are providing services within the same economic networks work in a way which privileges insecurity – the big difference being the highly unequal levels of social capital which can literally be realised as income and the degree of control and autonomy enjoyed by the assemblers of networks compared to those who are low level nodes in the same productive space.

We have really only just begun to think about the implications of all this for both economic analysis and social inequality.

We are also about to find out what happens to economies where competitive advantage comes from intangible factors when what is effectively value unsecured by any material assets or products encounters the collapse of the financialised networks and the evaporation of the fictitious capital which enabled the culture of the new capitalism to flourish (for some).

This might, of course, be dismissed as a set of metropolitan concerns. I doubt that’s true. Cities such as Toowoomba, Ipswich, Townsville, Rockhampton and others are increasingly promoting themselves as university towns, as creative and educational hubs. Some of the Brisbane v. the regions and elite v. populist stereotypes beloved of just about everyone on either side of the purported dividing line may be false, or at least much blurrier than usually conceived.

Still, the geographical and cultural spread of Queensland makes elections here hard to read – or rather, for those sitting in Brisbane, harder to read as the crow flies further. There are real gaps between social and cultural and economic interests in this big state which are difficult to bridge. Whether we end up with an LNP government holding fewer metropolitan seats than Labor, or a Labor government with a much diminished regional representation (or a minority government whose complexion is determined by rural and regional independents), the next state administration is going to find it more challenging to govern in the interests of all Queenslanders.

That’s particularly because – on both sides – the vision has been so barren.

In this context, it’s interesting to point to Jason Wilson’s take – as someone whose perception of state politics continues to be shaped by his North Queensland origins. I’d recommend reading his whole article, but I’d also wholeheartedly endorse his conclusion:

There is a larger issue here that goes to the heart of our federation — people are rightly confused about what state governments are for, and what they represent, at a time when the central government is seizing the initiative in more and more areas but is itself confronted with enormous difficulties in steering the country through its current economic problems. The original federation was created to recognise not only different jurisdictions and different responsibilites, but different histories and identities. So what does it mean to be a Queenslander now? Neither of Queensland’s major parties seem to offer much of a clue on this score either.

If Queenslanders saw evidence of leadership, capability and bona fides among the candidates, their attention might be focused a little bit more on this contest. As it is, faced with disaster on several fronts, and no solutions, they might be forgiven for devoting their energies elsewhere. When ships are spewing filth over Queensland’s pride — its beaches — why waste time rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic?

Cross-posted at Pineapple Party Time.

From my small air conditioned bubble in a sweltering Melbourne the abstract economic gloom of stock shocks and far away corporate collapses is getting less and less abstract with each passing day. Anecdotal reports of jobs drying up, businesses closing, incomes evaporating and people fast becoming un or underemployed are mounting around me.

It is probably a good time to remind myself just how much of the culture that I find interesting is the product not of the big budget top end of town but of the unique possibilities of the down side of the economic cycle. It seems obvious to me that in cultural policy – as with almost everything else – changing times call for changing approaches.

Yet the impending new realities have not gained much traction in our cultural debates. Over the last few months, I’ve been travelling up and down the east coast and dealing with arts agencies and organisations at various levels. I’ve been a little surprised at how little recognition there is that cultural policy – like most forms of government policy – can and must adapt and respond to economic conditions.

Each phase in the economic cycle creates a different set of cultural possibilites and problems.

Booms – like the one that we have experienced for a decade or more – have their obvious upsides. They are great for sponsorship and advertising, they create thriving commercial markets for visual arts, they improve ticket sales, they boost government revenues and potentially spending. At their best they allow creators to create and to more readily access people with money to buy and support their creations.

Yet all the money that sloshes around in boom times comes with its own problems. Valuable things become far more expensive – volunteer and paid labour is much more competitive to come by, space is at a premium, the demand commercially for creative talent can crowd out cultural initiative and low budget DIY creative activity becomes increasingly rare. Frankly, when it is too easy to make money or too much money is simply chasing too few opportunities in the “high status” world of creative cachet the reality is that a lot of diabolical shit from websites, to film and TV to any number of sponsored indulgences gets made and sold.

On the flip side, busts and recessions have their own set of perils and possibilities. The downsides are dire and self evident – dwindling arts budgets pale beside the damaged wrought in lives destroyed and certanties upended. Yet recessions can be great times for low budget cultural initiatives. Space – the almost impossible to find holy grail of artists in the boom times – becomes relatively cheap and available. Higher levels of unemployment means that talent has more time to experiment and innovate and less temptation (or opportunity) to chase big bucks elsewhere. Large scale cultural production – with its expensive overheads and high costs – becomes relatively more difficult. Small scale production – which works best when there is a very high ratio of initiative and labour to expenses and overheads – benefits immensely from the rapidly falling costs.

It’s no secret that I am a fan of the low budget at the small scale. It is reflected in almost everything that I have ever been involved with and is undoubtedly a bias from my formative experiences. It is a product of coming of age in Newcastle in times of 40 percent youth unemployment and finding some sense of purpose not in an imported static professional culture that came from above me but from a dynamic, evolving, often ramshackle and at times hard culture that was around me. Different times and different economic conditions create different cultures and different people. I would never have ended up stumbling upon this path if employment opportunities in those years had been more plentiful.

Looking at a post boom Melbourne it is easy to forget how much of what I love about this city is the product of the last great recession of the early 90s. Its laneway bars, its smart graffiti, its living CBD, its distinctive inner suburbs of eclectic shops and retail strips, its creative community are not the product of arts agencies or central planning but of the fertile ground, cheap space, and hard working initiative of a decade ago. The city is a rich ecology not created through central planning but grown in economic detritus and forged in the harsh and searing furnace of hard times.

Assuming that dire predictions of recession and stagnation prove true, then we are heading towards a similar point in the cycle again. Perhaps it’s time we started to ask ourselves what will this legacy will be?

I was also interested to note that Derek Barry has written a post at Woolly Days on the submission from my QUT Creative Industries Faculty colleagues Terry Flew, Stuart Cunningham, Axel Bruns and Jason Wilson (now at Wollongong Uni). Drawing on some lessons from an ARC Linkage Project on citizen journalism (and folks might recall the YouDecide2007 site which was a centrepiece of the research), they argue that public broadcasting needs to be reframed as public service media.

Derek Barry sums up the submission in more depth, but the key idea is that social innovation is now more likely to arise at the margins than from centralised planning. Flew et al contend that the ABC and SBS could enhance the performance of their Charter goals through leveraging user-generated content. This direction would involve reconceptualising the traditional educational and citizenship functions of public broadcasting universality as an opportunity for citizens to negotiate that civic capacity with others via a universally accessible platform.

Most of the submission goes to the news and current affairs roles of the ABC and SBS, but there may also be implications for other areas of the corporations’ activities.

Disclosure: I was also involved in working on the ARC Project which has fed into this submission.

Update: Terry Flew posts about the submission on his blog.

Update: Margaret Simons has a long article on the review at Inside Story.

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.

The points made in Terry’s post might be enough to riff off, but I’d be interested in any case in opening a discussion on where public broadcasting should go. I think we’re at an interesting crossroads where some of the unintended consequences of the Howard government’s funding cuts to ABC and SBS can now be leveraged into something more interesting – particularly in light of some innovation overseas (especially in Britain). I have a feeling that in the less “big picture” areas of federal government responsibility some more interesting developments are likely to occur under the Rudd government than in the headline stuff. And public broadcasting is one arena that can potentially attract a lot of citizen input. After all, it’s our ABC (and SBS) etc… That might particularly be the case given the apparent fluidity of ABC management personnel and thinking Margaret Simons has been covering at Content Makers.

So, as they say, let it rip!

Elsewhere: Margaret Simons.

So what just happened with the National Academy of Music?

Tim Hollo – Advisor to Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne

Yesterday, after a whirlwind six week campaign, Melbourne Uni and the National Academy of Music put out a statement the upshot of which is that the full 2009 program that the Academy had planned to run will now be run, with Brett Dean as Artistic Director, staying in its existing location, key staff remaining the same, and places to be offered to existing students. A new independent board will be appointed with a view to determining the Academy’s long-term programming.

Sounds an awful lot like a complete reversal of Peter Garrett’s decision to close the Academy on October 22. So how come the Minister’s spokesperson told AAP last night that

The Greens have got this entirely wrong… The government’s objectives have always been the continuation of elite classical music training into 2009 and beyond but with substantial changes to the way that is governed and administered, including new management and board. The intention was never that ANAM would close, but rather that the government would redirect its $2.5 million commitment to a new organisation from 2009. That will still happen.

It’s worth going through this story step by step to highlight the slow-motion backflip for what it is. Apologies for length, but I think it’s worth setting out the full story.

The National Academy of Music was established in 1994 by Paul Keating – one of the very few Australia political leaders of any stripe who really appreciated and understood classical music. It was originally part of Youth Music Australia, who run the National Music Camps and Australian Youth Orchestra. The Academy had a troubled childhood and adolescence, moving from running highly-reputed short courses (with incredibly stiff competition to get in, as I can attest to as a young musician and AYO member at the time!), to a globally-renowned full-time post-tertiary ‘finishing school’ for music performance. While the musical standard it offered has never really been in doubt, there certainly has been justified criticism of its administration in the past. The irony is that, in the last few years, most of those issues had been resolved, and the Academy had begun to flower and perform at or close to its full potential.

Unfortunately, tied up in all this has been an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in parts of the local community of South Melbourne due to the fact that the Academy was located in the South Melbourne Town Hall when the Kennett Government forcibly amalgamated councils, getting rid of the local council that was based there. The Academy was tarred with that brush, and sadly, by its own acknowledgement, has not necessarily always managed its community relations terribly well.

Because of the reasonable criticisms of the Academy as it operated in the early 00′s, two independent reports into its operations were commissioned – the Mills Report into its artistic merits, followed by the Grant Report, setting out a business case. Both of these reports were gently critical, saying the Academy should do more, but very clearly calling for a huge increase in funding to allow it to do so – an increase from $2.5 million to $6.5-7 million a year. Neither of these reports has ever been officially accepted by Government or published, but you can read the full Grant Report here.

There are many theories about what actually led to the specific events of recent months, including various suggestions about an unholy alliance between Prime Minister Rudd and his good friend and close adviser, Glyn Davis, VC of Melbourne Uni, a concerted campaign by unhappy locals, or cost shifting promoted by Lindsay Tanner. None of these really stack up, when you dig deep into them.

Our understanding is that certain Canberra bureaucrats had a bee in their bonnets about the Academy and, based on their understanding of the administrative problems of some years ago, had long been agitating for radical change – the closure of the Academy and its replacement by a new school. The previous two Coalition Arts Ministers – Rod Kemp and George Brandis – were both personally supportive of the Academy and would not let this happen. However, the Minister for Uncomfortable Contortions, Peter Garrett, provided the perfect opportunity to pounce.

On August 25, Mr Garrett wrote to John Haddad, Chair of the Board of the Academy. Here is what he had to say:

I write to advise you that the Australian Government’s 2008-09 budget allocation for the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) is $2.545 million to be administered through two six-month funding deeds.

I have considered the reviews of ANAM and ANAM’s response to those reviews. I seek ANAM’s commitment to implement the significant business reforms as recommended by the reviews.

The full allocation of funding in 2008-09 will be dependant on ANAM’s compliance with the terms and conditions of the first funding deed. Should the Australian Government be satisfied that ANAM has met the terms of the first deed, the second funding deed will be entered into. The period of the funding deeds will be July to December 2008, and January to June 2009.

Should ANAM accept the 2008-09 funding offer, it will be required to incorporate in its

Business Plan 2009 and Strategic Plan 2009-11 the following:

1. balanced budgets for 2009, 2010 and 2011;

2. an amended bursary policy;

3. a commitment and plan to diversify income;

4. a commitment and plan to be national leaders in classical music education and

Initiatives that support that role;

5. a framework for the review of ANAM’s constitution;

6. a succession plan of ANAM Board members to satisfy geographical diversity;

7. a plan for course certification;

8. continually engage a full-time artistic director; and

9. achieve a working alumni database.

ANAM will need to provide evidence of the above by 31 October 2008.

ANAM’s success in implementing the reform agenda in 2008-09 will be a key consideration in determining any future funding of ANAM.

The sharp-eyed amongst you will note a couple of direct contradictions in this, most notably the requirement to “continually engage a full-time artistic director” when funding is not guaranteed beyond 6 month blocks! The commitment to be a national leader in classical music education is an insult – the Academy always has been! Geographical diversity of the board is code for wanting to dissolve the existing board and replace it, and the board already has members from 4 states. Diversified income is code for requiring the Academy to fundraise off its own bat to supplement Commonwealth funding. Course certification, as anyone in the industry will tell you, is irrelevant in the extreme!

On October 3, Haddad replied to Garrett:

Dear Minister

I refer to your letter of 25 August and our recent meeting at your Electorate Office.

The Academy Board has met twice since receiving your letter and discussed its contents at length. The unanimous view of these meetings was that the Academy must apply its most strenuous efforts to meeting the concerns raised by you and your Department.

As a first step, and after speaking with your Department, we are recommending subject to your approval, that an Implementation Working Group be established to develop a Transformational Plan to enable the Academy to address the issues covered in your letter and ensure that they are actioned within your deadlines and with full joint support. The Working Group will be comprised of members of your Department along with key staff of the Academy and will be chaired by a member of the Academy Board. We believe the Working Group should also include a representative of the University of Melbourne who have already indicated their nominee would be Barry Sheehan. The Group will be assisted by the engagement of The Boston Consulting Group who have agreed to review the Academy’s structure and operations, on a pro bono basis.

As part of your consideration of our response, we also hope that we can work with your Department in making some adjustments to the proposed funding drawdowns, particularly in the next three weeks, so that the Academy can continue as a going concern. As set out in our session the variation as to the drawdown schedule that was not previously identified, creates very real difficulties for the Academy as it does not accord with the actual (and historically verified) expenditure profile of the Academy and its program.

He went on to address in turn each of the concerns raised by Garrett, setting out how it was already being addressed or could not be addressed without sufficient funds.

After several phone conversations which, according to the Academy, seemed positive in tone, Garrett wrote back to Haddad on October 22:

Dear Mr Haddad

I refer to your letter of 3 October 2008 and your response to the terms and conditions of the Australian Government’s 2008-09 funding for the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM), as outlined in my letter of 25 August 2008.

Your letter indicates that the Board is unable to deliver on the reform agenda or meet the terms and conditions detailed in the first six-month funding agreement. In relation to your recommendation for a working group, I do not support such a proposal as ANAM has already had sufficient time to address these conditions.

Your response reflects my concern that ANAM may not be the most effective or efficient model for the delivery of national programs supporting elite level classical music training, and I have accordingly asked my Department to investigate alternative options for the delivery of this training. Consequently, and consistent with my letter of 25 August, the Australian Government will not provide funds to ANAM to conduct its training programs in 2009. I have instructed my Department to prepare a revised funding agreement to provide ANAM with sufficient funds to complete its 2008 training program. This agreement will be provided to you shortly.

I understand that cessation of Australian Government funding may result in ANAM not continuing operations in to 2009. Should this matter require clarification, you may direct your enquiries to my department.

Note in particular that final comment. Peter Garrett knew exactly what the impact of his decision was – no ANAM for 2009. Because of actual or perceived problems with the administration of the school, he was knowingly destroying a pedagogical and cultural institution that had developed a global reputation. He was tossing out 55 of Australia’s top young musicians only weeks before the end of the year, with no plans for 2009.

Impact of this decision: closure of the Academy with absolutely no plan in place for a replacement to take on the students and continue the momentum of their training. The only reference to future plans was “I have accordingly asked my Department to investigate alternative options for the delivery of this training.”

The outcry began. Shortly thereafter, the Greens were approached to offer what help we could. Starting with a joint motion with the Liberals, a question in Question Time and a series of Questions on Notice, we began to get involved. At the same time, musicians and artists from around the world joined the campaign.

Thanks to this outcry, Minister Garrett was pressed to outline what would happen to the students of the Academy. On November 18, Garrett released his proposal for a new body, to be called the Australian Institute of Music Performance. The AIMP would start in July 2009, with transitional arrangements sending students to the Uni of Melbourne – a totally inappropriate solution none of them were happy about. The AIMP looked strangely like ANAM, although it would take many months, if not years, to achieve the same level of performance. In addition, it had a name that uncomfortably mirrored the existing Australian Institute of Music in Sydney.

This was the first step in the backflip. There would be a new institution that would do effectively the same thing as the existing one, but under a different name and more directly controlled by Melbourne University.

The next Friday, November 28, Christine and I met with students and staff at the Academy, inviting them to bring their music to Canberra to lift the campaign several notches. We had the privilege of attending their spectacular concert that evening! But, in the meantime – at 3.30 pm on a Friday afternoon (a favourite time of Environment Ministers to release uncomfortable information) – Garrett proudly announced that he had decided to keep the name ANAM, instead of replacing it with AIMP! This was seen by students, staff and supporters as the nonsensical slap in the face that it was.

Step two in the backflip – let’s keep the same name, as well as the essentially the same activities! And, hey, into the bargain, we’ll let the students stay in the same place!

After a flurry of activity over the weekend, 12 students came to Canberra with Brett Dean, the Artistic Director, and staff members Bill Hennesey, Nick Bailey and Hillary Frost on the night of Monday December 1. The call was for a 12 month moratorium on the closure to allow for a proper discussion about the Academy’s future without disadvantaging the students and destroying the continuity of their training.

Bright and early on the Tuesday morning, musicians welcomed MPs and Senators at the traditional “doors” media scrums on both sides of Parliament, making quite an impact. During the day, music echoed in the corridors throughout the House, with students and staff holding a press conference and simply playing beautiful music. The President of the Senate denied them permission to play at Aussie’s Café, the haunt of all the lobbyists, MPs and staff. They also managed to get meetings with Labor backbenchers, Peter Garrett and, most importantly, Terry Moran, head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Finally, they secured agreement that, on Saturday December 6, there would be a meeting in Melbourne including Brett, Nick, Terry Moran, Glyn Davis and representatives of the Department.

This is where we get to the best part.

The meeting was a great success, and Brett Dean called us delighted with the outcome. The Academy would run its full program for 2009 as planned, a new, independent board would be appointed, and its first job would be to determine the next few years of programming for the Academy.

Now, there are two ways of seeing this. On one level, it is a very effective delivery of the transition strategy to a new institution, which happens to have the same name as the previous, many of the same staff, many of the same students, and be based in the same location. That’s certainly what Minister Garrett’s office is saying has happened – there is nothing to see, move along.

On another level, of course, it is a complete reversal. Instead of the closure of the Academy with no future plans in place, as we had on October 22, we have the Academy continuing exactly as it had planned, with the only difference being the dissolution of the board and appointment of a replacement. This is all that should have happened in the first place – Garrett should have dismissed the board and kept the Academy going while appointing a new one. Instead we had a terribly ham-fisted approach which put the students and staff through a month and a half of heartache.

All is well that ends well, I suppose.

On the bright side, they got a great introduction to the world of politics! And, as one obsessed with music and politics who used to admire Peter Garrett so greatly, I reckon this is a pretty good outcome.

Related post: Previous LP discussion of this issue here.

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. This bungled decision, which as I have been arguing demonstrates very neatly the weak nature of Garrett’s performance in being captive to bureaucrats on one hand and Rudd mates such as Glyn Davis on the other, fits a pattern. That pattern is of inaction, poorly thought out policy, and empty rhetoric as a substitute for vision. The pattern is of a Minister afraid to show real leadership. Perhaps the 2020 summit was supposed to provide the vision thing, but there’s been precious little sign of any real thinking or innovation in cultural policy from the Arts Minister. Fine words about the vital importance of creativity to Australia’s cultural and economic future are ringing rather hollow at the moment.

Elsewhere: To her credit, Greens Senator Christine Milne has been outspoken about the ANAM decision – see her post at GreensBlog and media releases linked from here. The post does a fine job of tracing the history of the issues with ANAM and the trajectory of the policy on the run stuff up that Garrett is responsible for. Via Alastair in comments, it’s interesting to note Melbourne Ports Labor MP Michael Danby speaking out in Parliament to oppose the decision.

You can sign an online petition opposing the ANAM defunding here.

Update: There’s been a partial about face from Garrett with ANAM now to keep its name and receive half a million dollars of transitional funding but still be transferred to Melbourne University.