Creative Arts Held to Ransom by the Indigenous Voice to Parliament

This picture shows the Opera House illuminated in the colours of the Aboriginal flag in Sydney on Australia Day on Jan. 26, 2023. (Robert Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

In Australia, the federal government seeks to amend the Constitution to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament—a vague, race-based advisory body that would make representations to Australian parliamentarians in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The Voice is the first hurdle towards fully implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a radical and racially-motivated declaration that demands, among other things, a percentage of the gross domestic product be paid annually to Aboriginal Australians.

I am staunchly opposed to the implementation of this Uluru Statement and look forward to contributing to the debate ahead of The Voice referendum scheduled to occur before the year’s end.

My opposition is at odds with, as far as I can tell, every arts institution in Australia.

In my own field of music, I cannot think of one notable art music ensemble, orchestra or organisation that publicly shares my hesitance to constitutionally reaffirm race as a concept.

Quite the opposite: nearly all Australian artists of an established public profile, arts executives, and bureaucrats support The Voice.

The right to free opinion must always be voraciously defended, but if you form the view as I do that there is no empirical or logical justification that conclusively suggests The Voice to be advantageous or even viable, you might reasonably ask why artists are so keen to champion it.

A visitor attends the opening of French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts and Goya: Drawings from the Prado Museum at NGV International in Melbourne, Australia, on June 25, 2021. (Graham Denholm/Getty Images for NGV)

Earlier this year, the federal government released its National Cultural Plan, which it calls “Revive: a place for every story, a story for every place.” The plan is summarised as a five-point plan; each ranked in order of importance:

1. “First Nations First: Recognising and respecting the crucial place of First Nations stories at the centre of Australia’s arts and culture.”
2. “A Place for Every Story: Reflecting the breadth of our stories and the contribution of all Australians as the creators of Culture.”
3. “Centrality of the Artist: Supporting the Artist as a Worker and celebrating artists as Creators.”
4. “Strong Cultural Infrastructure: Providing support across the spectrum of institutions which sustain our arts, culture and heritage.”
5. “Engaging the Audience: Making sure our stories connect with people at home and abroad.”

Indeed, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has admitted that First Nations culture is at the heart of “Revive.”

Holding Style Above Craft Should Be Considered an Artistic Crime

It alarms me that the prime minister considers this Indigenous style—a term we might use to denote the aesthetic of our previously-discussed craft—more important than the cultural infrastructure required to communicate that style.

Governments should provide a stage to enable cultural success, but never a script. If governments prioritise style before craft, they effectively prescribe to their nations which stories are acceptable and which are undesirable. Some of the worst dictators in history, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong, were known adherents of this totalitarian approach to art.

Moreover, an analysis of Revive’s $286 million (US$186 million) budget reveals that an incredible $227.2 million is being spent on policies related in full or part to Aboriginal Australians.

In other words, 79.4 percent of Australia’s national cultural plan is, at the very least, thematically dedicated to about 3.8 percent of Australia’s population.

A general view of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, Australia, on April 12, 2023. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

And all this in the year of The Voice referendum, too. Could it simply be a coincidence, or are the arts being taken advantage of to further a specific political agenda? I strongly suspect the latter.

That being the case, no wonder artists and arts institutions are queuing up to support the Voice: that’s where the money is for a starved, dependent industry.

Australian creatives are being held to ransom. It seems that if we want to maximise our chances of benefiting from state funding, then our art must promote the radical ideologies that are currently devouring the Western world.

I patently reject these terms. An artist’s first duty must be to himself.

As a composer, I write music that foremost interests me, regardless of whether it is popular or politically vogue. In this, I am not selfish. I am vitally authentic.

I wonder how artists and arts institutions might reassert their own authenticity and liberate themselves from traversing the ideological quagmire.

Of pivotal importance for the individual creative, I think, is the embrace of an entrepreneurial spirit.

The notion that authentic art is, in fact, intellectual property to be independently championed seems to me certainly worth exploring.

But, above all, artists who in their heart object to the ideological constraints being imposed upon them must have the courage to do so publicly. For if we go on repressing our own voices, we continue to commit the greatest crime an artist possibly can.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.