Later today, Creative Australia’s CEO, Adrian Collette, will appear before a Senate Estimates hearing in which he can expect to be grilled on rescinding the appointment of artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino as Australia’s representatives at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Let’s hope he doesn’t refuse to answer questions citing the external review of the selection process announced last week. It would help avoid the fate suffered by predecessor, Tony Grybowski. When asked in 2016 by then Greens Senator Scott Ludlum in a Senate Estimates hearing for the Australia Council’s response to the ‘Brandis Inquiry’ into the Coalition’s evisceration of the agency, Grybowski said he didn’t have one. To which Ludlum replied: “You’re not just sitting back and taking it. Is that what you’re telling me?” Labor Senator Catryna Bilyk added: “I think the Council’s been conspicuously silent about the Coalition’s ­savage attack on it and the arts sector in general.”

Fast forward to 2025, and immediate surrender has replaced silence as an agency tactic. Creative Australia’s Venice Biennale backflip was hurriedly taken in response to one question in parliament from a Coalition backbencher and an article in News Corp masthead, The Australian.

Between these two hearings — almost a decade apart — is a slide into ignominy for the national agency which threatens to take the rest of us with it, as evidenced by the ongoing damage to Australia’s reputation internationally. It’s emblematic of the elision of government and Creative Australia partly enabled by updates (2013) and amendments (2023) to its governing Act. Once at arm’s length, the two are now rubbing shoulders. It’s a murky landscape, and a critical factor in the pattern of censorship, institutional control, and government interference that mars the history of the Australian arts scene.

Censorship can be implicit and explicit.

Implicit censorship has an insidious effect on the cultural milieu. It’s the equivalent of perceived pressure in sport. If, for example, an artist or company is considering whether to call out a funding agency or cultural institution for poor behaviour, they might decide against it because of the negative pressure they perceive they will suffer regarding future funding and employment opportunities. In the context of artists’ rights, I have regularly witnessed artists and cultural operators decide against formally objecting and complaining for these reasons. These decisions become reflexes embedded over time, diminishing transparency and sector justice. They also embed themselves in our institutions, as seems to be the case here. The minister, Tony Burke, publicly stated he applied no pressure on the CEO and that a Board meeting had been called even before he spoke with him after Question Time.

Creative Australia’s bizarre decision appears to be an example of an institution succumbing to perceived pressure. We can only speculate on the content of that conversation.

Implicit censorship in the arts occurs at the highest governance levels. In 2018, then-artist Gabriele de Vietri mapped the relationship between arts governance and the fossil fuels industry through the prism of board representation. A chilling undertaking, it explains in part the historical lack of art addressing climate change — the most profound issue of our time –- being commissioned, created, and presented by mainstream Australian institutions.

Explicit censorship, the tip of the iceberg of implicit censorship, is the visible symptom of an underlying pathology.

In 2004, funding from Playing Australia for a verbatim theatre production about asylum seekers, Through the Wire, was denied. According to journalist David Marr this was

despite the show having a very high score on application. The Minister’s representative persuaded the committee not to recommend it for funding on the basis that it was not yet a fully-fledged production … In the industry there’s little doubt that Canberra was simply not going to back a politically unpalatable show.

The video game Escape from Woomera met a similar fate a year earlier. Both demonstrate direct government interference in arts funding.

A more recent example is that of performance artist Casey Jenkins and their successful battle in the federal court with the Australia Council for the Arts, resolved in 2023 over funding rescinded in 2020 in the wake of criticism of their artwork by right-wing commentators. It was revealed in court that the agency had discussed the artist’s application “with third parties outside its normal practice and without the artist’s permission”. A hit-piece by right-wing shock-jock Peta Credlin and criticism from a representative of the IPA was enough for the agency to rollover. Jenkins’ response to the court decision reverberates today:

I believe many arts institutions in Australia select artwork to pander to popular opinion or perceived threats from government or media, rather than leading public discourse with integrity.

Over the last year, explicit censorship has ramped up. In early March 2024, the State Library of Victoria (SLV) terminated the contracts of four artists who had been contracted to run a Teen Writing Bootcamp. The artists share similar views on the Palestine-Israel conflict. SLV maintained the termination of the artists’ contracts was a deferral of the program and that the decision was “not based on the political views or identity of anyone involved with the program.” This official line persisted despite leaks from staff meetings to the contrary. SLV’s actions sparked widespread and sustained criticism from the independent arts community and their own library staff. In State Parliament, now-Greens MP de Vietri called on SLV to “publicly and fully account for its decision.” In July, evidence was cited in The Guardian that SLV surveilled the artists’ social media accounts prior to terminating their contracts.

Other prominent instances of artists being criticised or cancelled for expressing an opinion about or support for Palestine in the context of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict involve the Sydney Theatre Company and the MSO. This is a new circumstance, in which confected right-wing media and political pressure, either perceived or explicit, significantly impacts institutional decision-making.

We need to interrogate the Board of Creative Australia’s decision through our current circumstances and an historical prism to recognise the pattern for future understanding.

Through these examples there is a clear narrative that tracks why and how institutional behaviour shapeshifts according to prevailing conditions. The narrative is shaped by several factors.

The overriding arc is the neoliberalisation of Australia’s arts sector supervised by PM John Howard. The first two instances of explicit censorship cited above occurred at the height of his prime ministership and constitute direct government interference. This is when our cultural institutions started to be guided in their decisions by perceptions of risk.

A second and related factor is dissonance in governance structures. This is a consequence of neoliberalisation and a symptom of the attendant politicisation of institutions. Australia’s arts boards have long been a problem. On multiple occasions, I have encountered the wariness of international colleagues applying for leadership positions in Australia for fear of dealing with unpredictable board behaviour, a reputation seeded in the treatment that Peter Sellars received as Artistic Director of Adelaide Festival 2002. Creative Australia Board member Wesley Enoch was quoted in The Guardian as saying that “there were no guarantees the board would not override future recommendations made by Creative Australia’s advisory panels.” This is unsettling. What is the point of the panels if their expertise and recommendations are overridden? Why doesn’t the Board simply make all the decisions? Why would any artist or cultural operator risk ending up in a similar morass the Venice Biennale advisory panel now find themselves in? Something is awry. The Board and executive leadership should be attending to the functions laid out in its Constitution, such as I article 11 (e) — to uphold and promote freedom of expression in the arts.

A third factor is the lack of professional knowledge in institutions about art, artists, and artmaking. This has been in savage decline over the last decade. Very few state and federal arts bureaucrats have adequate industry experience. A fellow practitioner now working within a major arts agency confided that almost none of their colleagues have sold a ticket to a show nor tried to create an audience for one and yet they provide advice, opinion, and assessments on doing so. They have zero understanding of an artist’s working life and no deep knowledge of the sectoral dynamics their work serves. How Creative Australia’s CEO — who seems to have been responsible for the final decision along with the now-resigned head of visual arts — could not have known or discovered the works of the selected artist that later caused such deep concern, beggars belief.

My final thoughts go to the artist and curator who have borne the brunt of this injury. Selection for the Venice Biennale is a significant event for an Australian artist and curator. To be treated so shabbily must cause pain to both. One can only hope the outcry of fellow artists, the solidarity shown by many, and the strong stance of their shortlisted colleagues, provides some succour. Creative Australia’s decision to rescind their appointment seems to revolve around earlier works which have been misrepresented as support for a terrorist or a terrorist act. More than 60,000 people viewed the more contentious piece, You, when it was originally presented in 2007 at Sydney’s MCA without any protest. In other words, the decision is based on viewing works of art made in the past through a present-day prism with a pre-existing agenda. The main explanation of one of the works comes from Australia’s Museum of Contemporary Art which describes it as “purposefully ambiguous”. Ambiguity is a very powerful dramaturgical tool, it can open spaces where there were none, it can sow doubt in otherwise fixed cultural and political positions, it can encourage a broad debate and deep thinking on the social material it touches. Sounds like the kind of work we are all in desperate need of.

Reinstate Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino.