Do SA’s cultural policies live up to Don Dunstan’s vision?

Flinders University academics Tully Barnett and Justin O’Connor ask whether a ‘Dunstan tax’ might invite leaders to dig deeper.

The centenary of Don Dunstan’s birth this month is marked by a full range of celebrations and commemorations for this visionary and transformative politician. His impact could be felt across the nation, the state and the city, through the Dunstan Decade’s broad and progressive legislative agenda – from Aboriginal land rights and reconciliation, to decriminalisation of homosexuality, promotion of social justice and multiculturalism, as well as urban development and ending the six o’clock swill by reforming pub opening hours.

His vision was especially powerful in the field of arts and culture, wrenching a genteel Anglophile city into a cultural hotspot with national and international resonance. Don built much of South Australia’s hard and soft cultural infrastructure, not just the statutory body model much emulated elsewhere, as seen in the Adelaide Festival Centre, the South Australian Film Corporation, but other unique organisations such as JamFactory. We need to examine this legacy in a more nuanced way.

But we also need to ask where that cultural policy vision is today. An audience member at a recent cultural event provocatively suggested that any politician trading rhetorically on Don Dunstan’s legacy should be required to put new money into the arts budget: the Don........

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