Friday 8th March 2002 Boxing with Mal Meninga

I opened up The Canberra Times the other day to find a half-page devoted to a little grey diary detailing a Raiders pre-match warm-up procedure, hour by bleeding hour. Maybe it's good that this sort of thing is displayed in the public arena as the Raiders lost 38-0 to the Bulldogs the previous weekend. But consider that if after a bad production or review, an artist were allowed to publish their rehearsal or production notes/regime, hour by hour, to convince readers that they too were serious. It could certainly make a deplorable performance sound uncharacteristic.

What is inexcusable is the amount of space and time given to our mediocre local sports professionals (let's call it like it is- the Cannons and Raiders are not performing commensurate to the space they are given in the local media), while many professional artists are struggling to get exposure for their work while having to pay the exorbitant prices of publicity, space hire and performance rights - to name a few things - savagely underfunded. It may not be fair to compare the arts with sport, but if our professional artists fall short of the mark, you can be rest assured that they are less likely to receive favourable consideration and print-space year in, year out.

My logic is thus: if we have to have a sports team in the national arena, we also have to have arts companies/practitioners there. So, if we are unwavering in our support of the Raiders and the Cannons, we have to do the same for our painters and poets as well. And David Afield's recent call for more substantial support for local arts practitioners is very timely in that regard. Like or unlike the sportstars, we do have a responsibility to be accountable for our product - but a lot of good local theatre, for example, performs more competently and consistently than the artistic equivalent of a 38-0 drubbing. That's for sure. At the risk of pushing the analogy, most artists regularly make the finals series, are not struggling at the bottom of the table, yet do not receive the attention of sports entities that are, in comparison, substandard.

There are very few photographs of artists doing summer workshops and extending their skills in the drudgery of a rehearsal room. Why? Because it's not "newsworthy". Possibly dull. But then again, seeing Raiders paddling in dinghies in the ocean, running around with tyres strapped to their waists, or thrashing the Junee Diesels in a redundant pre-season dress rehearsal are deemed more attractive to readers than any meaningful arts coverage.

I can hear the arguments about the small population of arts readership, but "box-office" receipts are - and the Raiders would probably argue this as well - not the only thing we should use to gauge the worthiness of a sporting or artistic event. There is also the issue of what these things provide to a community and culture over and above commerce and the immediate sphere. John Ralston Saul indicates in "On Equilibrium" (Penguin 2001) that we 'recall' Leonardo Da Vinci when we hear the word "Renaissance". Not the chief town economist. Not some bureaucrat. And not the local pub's pugilist. Writes Saul, "It seems memory does work. It retains what is central and filters out what is tertiary or marginal. Leonardo remains because he is an expression of our shared knowledge."