In 2005, with a lifelong interest in the arts, a career background in higher education and no professional experience of arts administration, Leigh Tabrett was appointed to lead the Queensland Governments arts agency. She was also chair of the Cultural Ministers Council Statistics Working Group and has contributed to many public policy processes including the new National Cultural Policy. In a trenchant reassessment of these years she explores how the lack of clarity about the core purposes of government funding has reached deep into how these systems operate both at state and federal level. Can we have a national system of public support for the arts, she asks, in the absence of any clear sense of purpose for such a system? Is there a better way?
