Federal Labor is engaged in urgent reform, making up for the “lost decade” under the Coalition. The Voice, industrial relations, climate change, universities, health, Asian-Pacific diplomacy, research and development are all undergoing significant policy review. We can now add the new National Cultural Policy, dubbed Revive.
The reference points since the launch of the policy have been Whitlam and Keating, both for their reforming energies and their love of the arts. But it is worth putting this into an international context.
Australia’s lack of a cultural policy was often seen as a throwback to some philistine past, provoking a toe-curling culture cringe at the thought of how this might look overseas. But the Coalition was in fact adopting a right-wing politics that began with the mid-1990s US Republican Party, then picked up in the United Kingdom, across the European Union and beyond.
