Yesterday is the new tomorrow

Australia's conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott has reinstated Knights and Dames as Australia honours for people who make exceptional contributions to the country's public life.  It is part of a raft of "initiatives" designed to roll back progress to a time when racist language in public life went unchecked, when nobody had heard of climate change, when women did not hold ministerial posts (only one does in Abbott's government) and when financial advisers giving advice that was designed primarily to boost their own kickbacks was just part of the game.

Not since 1983 has anybody in Australia been anointed a Knight or Dame. On the assumption that the early months of the Abbott government are programmatic for its future plans, it should be possible to predict its legislative program for the coming years, not by reading the proverbial tea leaves, but by looking back through the history books.

In 1983 Alan Bond's yacht Australia II won the America's Cup. Bond went on to spend four years in jail for fraud. Nicole Kidman made her film debut in 1983, in a kids film called BMX Bandits. Back then, home-grown music could still top the pop charts. The biggest selling single of 1983 was Australiana by Austen Tayshus. The final episode of US TV series M*A*S*H flashed across our screens in that same fateful year. But perhaps the most important innovation of 1983 was the debut of Microsoft Word, the word processing software that would go on to revolutionise writing around the world.

The fact that Margaret Thatcher was re-elected to power in 1983 will no doubt make Mr. Abbott think he is on a lucky year for arch conservatives. But one last event in 1983 may give Tony Abbott pause for thought in his nostalgic drive to resurrect the past. In 1983 the conservative government of Malcolm Fraser was granted a double dissolution election and lost it to the Labor Party of Bob Hawke.

Can George Brandis paint?

Let’s hope he can. Because if he gets his way there may soon be a a lot of bare gallery walls around Australia waiting for someone to fill them. In a petulant response to the recent withdrawal of the Sydney Biennale from a sponsorship deal with Transfield, Brandis, Minister for the Arts in Tony Abbott’s government, has directed the Australia Council for the Arts to find ways of financially punishing a funding recipient who "unreasonably refuse(s) private sector funding, or … terminate(s) an existing funding agreement with a private partner”.

The Minister’s dummy-spit is a reaction to the Sydney Biennale controversy when a number of high-profile Australian and international artists said they were withdrawing from the Biennale because of the sponsorship deal with Transfield, a company that has business interests in running Australia’s refugee detention camps on behalf of the Abbott government. So if the Australia Council now introduces a requirement for its funded companies and projects to accept private sponsorship irrelevant of the ethical concerns of artists, we may soon see events such as the Sydney Biennale taking place with seriously curtailed artist roll calls. Many contemporary artists hold their political and ethical views quite strongly. There are few who ascribe to Brandis’ art-for-art’s sake worldview. And let’s be honest, most high-profile international artists do not need the Sydney Biennale (or similar Australian arts events) as much as it needs them. A 2016 Sydney Biennale with installation work by George Brandis as the main attraction is probably not what many people want. Even Branids as conceptual artist is unlikely to get many punters through the doors.

Image: Matthias Blume