From Coombs to Crean: popular music and cultural policy in Australia

Abstract

The many bodies administering Australian arts activity were incorporated within the Australia Council, established in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor Government to oversee Commonwealth arts policy under the direction of H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs. This article takes the establishment of the Australia Council as a starting point in tracing changing attitudes towards the practices and funding of popular music in Australia and accompanying policy discourses. This includes consideration of how funding models reinforce understandings of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, the ‘cultural’/‘creative’ industries debates, and their effects upon local popular music policy. This article discusses the history of local music content debates as a central instrument of popular music policy and examines the implications for cultural nationalism in light of a recent series of media and cultural reports into industries and funding bodies. In documenting a broad shift from cultural to industrial policy narratives, the article examines a central question: What does the ‘national’ now mean in contemporary music and the rapid evolution of digital media technologies?

Keywords:

• popular music
• Australian cultural policy
• music industries

Notes

1. In Australia, the Labor Party adopts the US spelling rather than the Labour Party of British reference.

2. Australia has a tripartite system of government, with a federal (national) government co-existing with six state/territory governments (Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania). This is further supplemented by a series of local councils of varying sizes. Whilst the cultural policy structures at state and local levels are important, in this article I will focus primarily on federal structures.

3. ‘Conservative’ in Australian political contexts in the main refers to the Liberal Party, and the rural party, the National Party (which existed as the Country Party until its name change in 1975). Both parties have governed in a coalition arrangement in every Liberal Party election win since the 1950s.

4. A recommendation of the McLeay report, the blank tape levy was the proposed funding stream for local music infrastructure. Its failure to materialise was due in part to the federal government’s inability to contest tape manufacturers’ objections. The High Court of Australia declared the levy to be unconstitutional in 1993.

5. The use of the term ‘contemporary music’ began appearing in reports in the 1990s in Australia to distinguish from classical and art music forms. In the early 2000s, a Contemporary Music Working Group was formed to represent different industry sectors (see Cloonan 2008).

6. Despite its public disavowal, some Creative Nation policies remained part of Howard government policy from its 1998 ‘contemporary music development’ package, principally the continued funding of the Contemporary Music Touring program.

7. Published before the recent Federal Court judgment, it is interesting that the Review believed that ‘the principle of regulatory parity suggests that radio-like services on the internet and terrestrial radio services should be treated in a similar manner’ (Commonwealth of Australia 2012, p. 78).