Calibans of culture.(Ryan)(David Throsby's report suggests Australia should have a national cultural policy)(Column)

Some Caliban of Culture, some absurd Messiah of the Paranoiac State

--A.D. Hope

AUSTRALIA'S CURRENT would-be Caliban is David Throsby, an economist; one of his famous predecessors from the cave was also an economist--"Nugget" Coombs. Near the conclusion of a lifetime of service to his country, Coombs, too, acquired the beard that seems to go with culture.

It is Well known that Hermann Goering said that whenever he heard the word culture, he reached for his revolver; well known, and wrong. It was actually the pithy sentiment of German playwright Hans Johst (d. 1978), and what he said was: "Whenever I hear the word culture, I release the safety-catch on my Browning." No matter.

But the general idea was quick to catch on in Australia; as early as 1944 our highly cultural national poet, Ern Malley, was writing: "Culture, forsooth! Albert, get my gun."

Professor Throsby has just published a long report suggesting that Australia should have a national cultural policy and that, through a grass-roots debate, our citizens Should define what that policy ought to be.

I suspect that Throsby has not fully assessed the depths mid dangers of the waters he so lightheartedly sails: their unpredictable tempests, their lethal hidden currents, their sharks lurking voraciously; perhaps he has not charted the wrecks, just below the surface, of other adventurers in earlier good ships also named Cultural Policy.