Culture Wars Down Under

An old friend of mine, Imre Salusinszky, has been appointed to chair the Australia Council's literature board. (The Australia Council is Oz's counterpart to the US' National Endowment for the Arts.) In spite of having been chairman of the English Department at the University of Newcastle and having a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford, his appointment appears to have upset some of Australia's arts establishment:

Fresh from appointing controversial historian Keith Windschuttle to the board of the ABC, the Federal Government yesterday revealed that The Australian's Imre Salusinszky will chair the Australia Council's literature board. Sydney Institute director Joe Gersh will become the council's deputy chair.

Former Australia Council chairwoman Hilary McPhee attacked the appointments. "This Government is shameless; their ideological bent is so palpable," she said.

But critic and cultural commentator Peter Craven said Dr Salusinszky "notwithstanding his deeply lunatic politics, is a man of considerable warmth with an intense feeling for the literature he likes".

Perhaps some of them are upset because Imre quit his tenured academic position several years ago to become a journalist working for that notorious fascist Rupert Murdock.

Anyway, I think Imre will do a wonderful job doling out writing grants since he cares a lot about good literature and not a whit about multiculti political correctness. (Of course, this begs the question of whether or not the government should be in the business of deciding which artists should receive funding in the first place, but that is another story.)