Dialogue: Taking the high road in the arts

By COLIN JAMES

Coups are in: George Speight's in Fiji, Jim Anderton's on investor confidence, Helen Clark's with arts buffs. What should we make of them?

The Fiji lesson for us is not Mr Speight's maudlin meanderings. It is that when social and economic gaps separate ethnic groups, "closing the gaps" takes on urgency. If in 30 or 50 years our "gaps" are still wide, the losers may lose faith in constitutional methods.

Miss Clark's Government's constant preoccupation with "closing the gaps" is not just genuflexion to Maori voters and MPs. It is also recognition that failure to do so will be a dogged drag on the economy, a barrier to social harmony and maybe mayhem down the track.

Mr Anderton's need to restate policy differences with Labour doesn't help. After he reiterated the Alliance's Reserve Bank policy on Thursday, foreign investors, who have neither the time nor the inclination to read the fine print of Mr Anderton's simultaneous reiteration that Labour policy would prevail, dumped our tiny, unpromising markets as too risky and too much bother.

That, in turn, undermines local business confidence, postpones investment and thus reduces the prospect of the job creation needed to close the gaps - and, incidentally, the jobs the coalition needs to stay in power. Mr Anderton has yet to produce jobs as Economic Development Minister. Labour ministers note that the promised local economic assistance fund designed to do this is still on the drawing board.

But Miss Clark got down to some job creation herself last Thursday. Amid scenes of tearful, whooping enthusiasm rare in Parliament's Grand Hall, she made the arts community feel valued and validated. The applause was like a great first night. I half expected an encore.

Miss Clark has now locked in a voluble voting cohort with pull beyond its numbers. If her $86 million also helps to build national identity, as she hopes, that, too, is potentially a vote bonus.

Her beneficence was mostly a recapitalisation of faltering arts or heritage organisations or capitalisation of new ones. It came with a warning not to expect a repeat. At the micro level that implies, for example, Ian Fraser buying in the last 10 or so members of his symphony orchestra show by show instead of keeping them on staff for a few cameo slots.

But arts organisations are can-do outfits. Dipping into working capital in down-times is endemic because it is all in such a good cause. Across the Tasman, the official Nugent report last December drafted a framework to wean major performing arts companies off this habit.

Among Nugent's most important recommendations: no bailouts or ad hoc funding because they send the wrong incentives; instead, a "reserves bank" of repayable funds in times of difficulty, accessed only under stringent conditions, including prudential standards. Officials have studied Nugent but Miss Clark's announcement nowhere specified prudential standards.

Nugent also urged that annual reports include performance indicators and progress against audience targets. Among others of its ideas arts companies might explore locally and with Australian companies are joint productions and commissioning, a "community of musicians" among the states and cooperation to buy advertising space.

Who benefits from Miss Clark's generosity? Some modest-income, non-balletomane smokers, slugged $120 million more in tax, fumed to Labour Party headquarters that they don't. (By the way, it was Annette King who hinted at banning smoking in pubs, not Miss Clark as I wrote last week.)

That said, Miss Clark's new Music Industry Commission will foster pop music, showing she has learned pop's value to national identity. Maori arts get some of the lolly, directly or indirectly.

But there is a noticeable lean towards high European arts and heritage. The Edwin Fox, a wooden immigrant ship Miss Clark labelled "of huge historical significance," got $300,000 and a prime ministerial visit on Saturday. Which might by chance remind those on the downside of the "gaps" who's on top.

* ColinJames@synapsis.co.nz