Comment

There are two potential futures I can see for the arts in Australia: one in which we emerge from the pandemic strengthened in our purpose, where the arts and cultural economies are valued for their intangible public benefits, where creativity and imagination lead us – and another where the search for financial certainty and economic returns reshapes what artists can make.

It is always fascinating to watch the cat-and-mouse game that Australian prime ministers play with election dates. Unencumbered by fixed terms, convention dictates that the campaign starts whenever the incumbent believes they are in the best position to win.

Imagine a federal minister who has a stake in a company alongside other members of his family. Imagine that company is accused of illegally poisoning more than 28 hectares of critically endangered grassland. Imagine the minister talks to senior officials in the office of the future treasurer.

Maureen Dowd’s New York Times interview in her garden with James Murdoch didn’t exactly set the world on fire with searing insights into the greenie billionaire who is now on the loose from his father and brother’s “hate-for-profit racket”. There was plenty of hedging from the younger Murdoch heir amid the ducking and weaving, yet also moments that revealed James drowning in search for words.

A beaming Scott Morrison gave the TV news crews the sort of picture opportunity they really appreciate. Perched behind a machinegun in the turret of a military tank, the prime minister was having a fun ride. The fun, however, didn’t last and the image became an apt metaphor for Morrison’s six days of scheduled campaigning in Queensland.

If ever we needed a gender lens on government policy, it is now. The impact of Covid-19 is being felt severely by many, but it is affecting women and men differently. This pandemic has highlighted, and exacerbated, existing inequalities in the home and the workforce.

On climate policy, the evidence is clear: ambition isn’t dictated by size, density, population or wealth. It comes down to one factor – how willing a government is to accept that rapid action is needed to avert catastrophic climate change. For nearly a decade, Australia’s government has been allergic to this fact.

Banana Benders are off to a state election at the end of this month and you’d have to think Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is in dreadful trouble, what with daily birching from the hacks at The Bowen Hills Bugle. Yet according to the latest polling, the ALP regime is comfortably ahead – 52 per cent to 48 per cent on a two-party preferred basis. And Palaszczuk is the favoured premier over her Nasty Party rival, Deb Frecklington – 48 per cent to 22 per cent.

The hole could surely be seen from Mars: a deficit of $213.7 billion this financial year and projected to fall to $66.9 billion in 2023-24, still massively in the red by previous Australian standards … The sheer size of the numbers suggests to seasoned observers that the government only half believes in the ‘hope’ the treasurer spoke of in his speech – hope that recovery is under way and that ‘Australia is up to the task’.

This week’s budget marks a remarkable turning point in Australia’s economic and political debate. Fears of budget deficits and public debt have been replaced by fears of pandemic and mass unemployment. And I’m not talking about a skittish public – these are the fears of Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg. Theirs has been a productive fear – one that’s shaken policy free from conservative tunnel vision and stripped the sheen off dogged neoliberalism, particularly for voters.