What does real liberalism look like? From Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal budget for Canada in March:
“Canada’s heritage, shaped by our diversity, deserves to be celebrated and shared.
“Our cultural industries represent a key sector of our economy and the intersection of art, science and technology offers infinite opportunities to innovate and problem solve. Investing in the Canadian cultural sector helps to create jobs, strengthens the economy and ensures that the unique Canadian perspective is shared with the world. Measures included in Budget 2016 will support important national institutions, safeguard our two official languages, and promote industries that highlight Canada’s culture by investing $1.9 billion over five years.”
That’s $2.01 billion for arts, language, culture and ideas for our Commonwealth cousins.
In Australia? Last week was a dark one: dozens of arts organisations began considering slashing jobs and output after their funding was ripped from them by this federal government, decades of writing experience and artistic skill walked out of Fairfax as media organisations struggle to balance the books, while our centuries-old native languages are being lost every day.
Australia could be entering a time of deep cultural deficit — the one big idea nobody in this election campaign is talking about.
It is a good move by the Canadian government, but it is more like drought relief after the Harper years that saw serious undermining of Canadian cultural expression.
Currently this country is being run by philistines, no imagination, no compassion, no morals. BTW the LNP inherited problematic Labor debt that has been doubled plus, since the LNP adults took charge. Not that you’d hear ScoMo or Matthias “de labor party fault, de labor party did it” Conman our own Belgian Waffle ever admit to that peccadillo. However, it looks like the voting sheeples will return this government to complete the job of sending this country further down the economic gurgler.
In many ways, the cultural deficit inAustralia is increasing. There are so many examples: the Brandis Heist and Fifield’s Catalyst, the cuts to the national institutions in Canberra ( National Library, National Gallery), cuts to the ABC, the loss of the ANU School of Music as a performance teaching institution, the cuts to CSIRO and the sacking of scientists, the high cost of the study of music and visual arts (HECS) and the underfunding of the relevant teaching institutions. I could go on and on. The response: on the whole, a mixture of indifference and ignorance.
The Coalition Philistines prefer to pour our tax dollars into war machines such as subs. Apparently jobs created by subs are more valid – not to mention lauded – than jobs in the arts.
We’ve had a decade of the country being run by amateur theologians, often of the stripe thst would talk to snakes under carnival tents raised in the goldfields.
Culture and science have no part in their glossolalia.