CENSORSHIP: Eros part of our humanity

We live in a complex society made up of people with different interests. Some of them, sport for instance, are majority interests. Others, like the high arts, are easily categorised and dismissed as elitist. But democracy, and egalitarianism too, is about spread, not the superior rights of the majority; government support of the arts is not an optional extra. It is a necessary fact of democracy, of egalitarianism and spread.

Governments do not produce art. They give grants to those who do, or they make art that would otherwise be too expensive for most people available to them; either free as in art galleries or by subsidising the price of a seat at the theatre, the opera or in concert halls. This is all we can expect of governments.

Whether the individual members of a government are themselves interested in the arts is neither here nor there. What we can expect from them is some understanding that to devote your life energy to photography, as Bill Henson does, or to writing music, as Ross Edwards does, or to poetry, like Les Murray, is serious and may need to be taken as seriously as running a company or even a country, and deserves respect -- the respect of one professional for another, writes David Malouf. Weekend Australian Review 21 Jun 2008