The Art Neuro Weblog

Bureaucratic Planning
"The future is uncertain and The End is always near." So sang the late Jim Morrison in 'Roadhouse Blues'.
I am writing this before I forget this very interesting piece of Australian Film history which was told to me most elaborately and lavishly last Friday night as we celebrated the birthday of one Brain A. Williams.

In the 1970's a certain man I shall refer to as MJ, but not Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson found himself in the crucible of the Australian Film Industry's revival. It was 1975, he was the General Manager and co-founder of the now-legendary Sydney Film Co-operative, who was invited to participate in the 1975 'Australia 75' event in the category of Film and TV.

At one of the meetings, he was regaled to The Plan by a group of fifty-something-year old high ranking bureaucrats in Canberra over a lunch. The Plan, was conceived by Prime Minister John Gorton and Nugget Coombs to resuscitate the Australian Film Industry back in 1968. It was a 3-stage plan, consisting of three decades where Australia would put into effect a concerted plan to develop a film industry and cultural industry. The Plan consisted of a decade of reconstruction, a decade of development and decade of consolidation. Simple enough.

What MJ reports is that when he reflects on his lifetime in the film business, the Plan was indeed carried out and there is nothing surprising in that in of itself, but when you look at the details, the events become striking. In 1971, the Federal government created institutions such as the AFC, and AFTS; invested money to the AFI. In 1981, it introduced the 10BA tax concession which opened the floodgates to investment and in 1981; and in 1991 they moved to create the Film Finance Corporation. What was amazing to MJ was not only the fact that the Plan had succeeded in resuscitating a long-dormant film industry to the point where Hollywood came to shoot in Australia, but the fact the plan had survived successive governments.

The way MJ put it, John Gorton and Nugget Coombs conceived the Plan in 1968; and this was not junked by William McMahon ("He wasn't stupid enough to ditch it", as MJ put it). Gough Whitlam obviously saw no problem in continuing a cultural programme, and neither did Malcolm Fraser and then treasurer John Howard. Hawke and Keating obviously did not abandon the Plan and neither has the current Coalition government. In other words (mine) the Australian Government sustained an Affirmative Long Term Plan (ALTP) for the Film Industry. According to MJ, he has seen signs of 'the Plan' or an ALTP in other areas and sectors of Australian life. There has been an ALTP regarding Welfare, taxation, Micro-economic Reform, and so on. And what is truly amazing about this is that Federal Governments of both Major Parties come and go, but in essence, the policies that get carried out are indeed according to the ALTP.

"Think about that for a moment, the scope of this thing," said MJ. "These people are out there voting on politicians thinking there is a choice, but really there isn't. There's just 'The Plan' for everything and the Federal Government is just moving on it, administering it."
MJ went on to cite all the examples; how Keating was planning to do the same thing as the Howard government of completely dismantling the CES and creating a jobs-placement market. The GST was a bone of contention because he couldn't get it through the Labor Caucus as Option C in 1985 so Keating used it as a political stick for the 1993 election instead but the GST was always going to happen (an observation with which I agree). Floating the dollar, the de-regulation of the banking sector, all of these momentous policy shifts opf the past were executed according to plans drawn up by high level policy planners in the various bureaucracies.
That's right.

According to MJ, the high level policy planners of this country are all working to a Plan that is over-arching all the little issues we see day-to-day. Politics as we digest it in soundbites and TV segments and column inches is all window dressing; Which is entirely believable. We live under the rule not of democracy but a polytechno-oligarchy. Elections are the stuff of popularity contests; sort of a puppet show for the gallery.
- All of which dovetails with the Frank Zappa observation that government is the entertainment branch of industry. Its importance lies in looking important and it's only important because it's important to look important. If you thought baseball was smoke, well, politics is no different it seems. So much for the importance of electoral politics. As for the old Left/Right debates that masquerade as policy setting, well we can all consign those to history as something akin to interesting Broadway Musicals of the past.

And so we came to the end of the 30 year Film Industry Plan in 2001. What did the bureaucrats say about the film industry after the 30year plan to MJ back in 1975?
"They said after that, all bets are off."
I am a film maker in the post-ALTP period of the Australian Film Industry. :)

- Art Neuro