Recently I was asked by literary journal Overland to respond to an article by Ben Eltham, Culture is bigger than the arts. My response appears in An arts council by any other name.
Those who read the article may have got the impression that I was less than impressed with Ben’s article. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. I agree with Ben that Australian cultural policy needs to be progressive. But, as a policy researcher and analyst, I found myself reacting not so much to what Ben was arguing, but to how he was arguing it. In my response I identify some methodological problems that I think weaken his case for policy reform.