The Office of the Arts (OFTA) has announced that the long-awaited National Cultural Policy (NCP) will be launched by the Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean, on 13 March at the National Press Club in Canberra.  According to the Minister and OFTA, the policy has been on hold awaiting the commitment of funds.

Members will recall that CAMD made a comprehensive submission in October 2011 to the National Cultural Policy Discussion Paper.  The CAMD paper placed particular emphasis on the need for the NCP to embrace a broader concept of culture beyond individual art forms and to meet the challenge of providing a greater level of leadership and coordination for the distributed national collection.  For further details see CAMD’s Contribution to the Development of the National Cultural Policy.

Meanwhile, according to The Australian, the federal opposition is threatening to scrap the entire document if it wins Government in September.  Coalition arts spokesman, George Brandis, was reported as saying that an Abbott-led government would find different ways “to restore the arts to a more central priority” (The Australian 1 March 2013).