And at a time when information technologies are conspiring to keep us at home, to separate us into smaller and smaller units of social interaction the theatre could well be the institution that keeps our society from that blank stare of madness. For it is not only in the story told, but in how it is told, how an audience sits and stands together, how they spatially connect to the story tellers, that the true meaning resides. So that, as well as an unstoppable compulsion to camp about and in Beaumarchais’ words ‘to show off in wigs’ is why we keep doing it. A chill wind blew through many of our minds a few weeks before the recent federal election campaign when the ads went out suggesting that a vote for Labor was a vote for the ‘elite’ arts. What did they mean? Well, our General Manager Rachel Healy tried to find out. She rang the Liberal party, was told someone would call back. No one did. She rang a Liberal Party Information Officer who couldn’t help. Posing as a swinging voter, she rang the Minister’s office in Canberra. They said they’d call back. No one did. She rang their office again the next day and the office said it had nothing to do with the ad and gave her a number in Melbourne. The man in Melbourne was very aggressive and said he wasn’t prepared to discuss the meaning of ‘elite’ and hung up. The Minister for the Arts, Senator Alston, finally publicly defended the ad, saying that it was in reference to the Keating initiated Australian Artists Creative Fellowships — that rather quixotic scheme to give a group of outstanding mid-career artists a wage for a few years, roughly equivalent to half the annual salary of a back bench politician.

Now we know that they didn’t run the ‘elite’ artists ads in Victoria for fear of upsetting Jeff Kennett but what is important here is not what the hidden target of the ads was but the perceived and therefore intended target — any recipient of arts funding. Any, because it is setting up a term that then plays straight into the prejudice in the mind of the mean-spirited and worried swinging voter. How dare they. We know that Senator Alston had made a number of submissions to Cabinet in relation to increasing Arts Funding, all of which the Prime Minister summarily rejected saying ‘there are no votes in the Arts’, but Mr Howard obviously took this idea a step further to ‘there are votes in ‘no arts’. For the first time the implicit bi-partisan notion that the arts were a worthy and noble recipient of Government support was being broken. Watch this space. In doing this it seems clear to me that Mr Howard was quietly following Pauline Hanson’s lead as he had done so weakly on immigration and on Aboriginal affairs. Just hanging out a net to catch any voters mean-spirited and fearful enough to follow the lure. The damage of this kind of policy is much more serious than the votes gained or lost. Because it brings out into the open and legitimises prejudices that ought to be a reason for shame. It sets the debate back fifty years. Or rather, it eliminates debate. Where the government should be informing the community, leading, pursuing moral certainty, it is instead punishing the arts for its perceived identification with Labor. Everything is seen in embattled party political terms. And our culture is being sacrificed to the stoush. Just look at the collateral damage that has hit the ABC. It is being punished for its independence. It may well pay with its life. The irony of all of this is how deeply Mr Howard himself is in need of a defining experience of theatre. We have all cringed in embarrassment at those images of our Prime Minister looking timidly into some piece of traditional Aboriginal performance, and you can see the panic rising behind his glasses — ‘what am I expected to feel?’ ‘Is someone taking the mickey here?’ And beyond the comedy of this moment you actually feel more than anything else an overwhelming sadness for this lost man.

The saddest sight of all was the entire audience of the Australian Reconciliation Convention turning its back on Howard when it became clear that he wouldn’t apologise on behalf of the Australian Government for the Stolen Generation of Aboriginal children. Who will forget that image — one of the most chilling and memorable events of our history. But Mr Howard reacted to his shame angrily, like a child. Mr Howard, there is no gap. Use the love that lurks inside your frightened body, the love you feel for young children, for your parents, for your language and make the leap. Identify. That’s what you can get from the theatre. It teaches you how to identify.

Now that Pauline Hanson has been locked back in the Queensland closet of viscous political loons, she will hopefully be remembered by her only slightly more vivid, but much more real, drag nemesis, her Edna, Pauline Pantsdown. All we can do is cheer her inevitable downfall and say together: ‘I don’t like it.’

And so I have the image of Australia blindly nudging its way forward, led by a Prime Minister for all the world like a blind mole, shoulders hunched, smelling out the path of least resistance. It is up to us to resist loud and strong. And now we have two federal Arts ministers. Not only the already ignored Senator Alston, but the National Party’s Peter McGauran. The brother, by the way of Julian McGauran who hounded Pasolini’s film Salo into extinction in this country and when asked about the implications for the Arts generally said ‘I don’t care about art, I’m from the National Party.’

A lamentable lack of stories in his childhood, I’d say. Let’s hope it was because his brother Peter was hogging the dress-up box. But I want to get away from talking about politics and government, but not before I say how dangerous for all of us, for our culture, is this new-found evangelical zeal in the Arts towards sponsorship. Okay so we have to have it, but why do we all have to be so ham about it. It is of course wonderful when an altruistic company or individual will give massive support for discreet acknowledgment — it has happened occasionally at Company B and I’m very happy about that. But what did Mal Fraser say about ‘a free lunch’? No such thing.

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