I am on the National Indigenous Council, but my background is that I am from the Northern Territory and a place called Borroloola. I have an Irish father and a tribal Aboriginal mother. At the age of four I was loaded onto the back of an Army truck from Roper River and sent south through to Mulgoa, which is 40 miles west of Sydney. After a few years there, under the auspices of the church and the government, we were removed from Mulgoa to what we thought would be back to the Northern Territory. But a priest started a home in Adelaide and I was unloaded there. I made contact with my family at Borroloola and, after an absence of 10 years, I have kept in touch ever since (p. 29).

We feel that the efforts of this small group to increase their private profits through the promotion of a false legitimacy for their businesses is increasingly focussed on the strategic and active undermining of the work of artist run and government run agencies. We take issue with those people that claim Aboriginal artists should be given free choice and that to do anything otherwise is racist and discriminatory. We feel that it is racist and discriminatory to presume that artists particularly in the more remote areas or the more disadvantaged areas are able to make free choices, given their circumstances (p.35).

I think that sometimes they are vulnerable just because they are hungry and poor. Desart’s executive notes on Desart’s committee meeting said, ‘Our kids sit down and they are hungry’ (p.39).

This indicates to me that we may have a best practice model in Indigenous affairs that good public policy should ensure is maintained and, if possible, replicated widely. That model is the community controlled arts centre that is publicly funded in part, hence ensuring external accountability, but is artist controlled, hence ensuring internal accountability, artistic independence and integrity. In places where this model works most robustly, as a general rule there is least opportunity for unethical informal operators to make opaque and informal deals with artists.

A problem I highlight in my submission is that lack of overall state patronage of the sector is resulting in undue pressure on arts centres to become commercially viable. Thus misunderstanding their service delivery role and their fundamentally mixed cultural and commercial character. This in turn might be a factor in enhancing rather than ameliorating unethical practice (p. 53).

Prof. Altman—There is not the level of engagement that, for instance, any of us would expect in terms of feedback in terms of our performance. This is a common complaint from community based arts centres. Again, we are very happy to laud them when artists from these arts centres feature, for instance, at Musee du Quai Branly in Paris. But, again, you rarely get a follow-up letter from a minister of the state or a senior bureaucrat saying, ‘It was terrific that an artist from your remote art centre represented Australia overseas or was involved in a retrospective exhibition’, as John Mawurndjul was in Basel at the Jean Tinguely Museum. I would not want to suggest any differentiation on ethnic grounds, but I suspect that if a living non-Indigenous artist had a retrospective at the Jean Tinguely Museum they would get considerable public acclaim.

Senator PARRY—Would that be, though, because of the networks involved? A minister is not going to become aware of every person who has a painting hanging somewhere or works exposed somewhere. Networks inform people and, if the Indigenous network is not as great as non-Indigenous networks, I am sure that would be a contributing factor.

Prof. Altman—I would not dispute that networks are important, but when you get—and I will repeat this—a living Indigenous artist having a retrospective in a major public art institution in Europe, in Basel and then in Hanover, in their own lifetime—and I do not think that there is a living Australian artist who has had a retrospective like that—and that artist does not get any political acknowledgement is pretty surprising. I should say that people in Europe note that with some surprise.

Senator PARRY—If that is correct, then that is poor.

Senator WEBBER—That is correct. Obviously, the network is there if people overseas know about it. I do not want to in any way diminish the contribution these people make, but every second Australian cricketer gets an Order of Australia and they are all over the place. But where people make a significant contribution to our own Indigenous culture, people overseas know about them and we do not.