What appointing a poet laureate would do for the nation In the grim war of attrition waged by successive federal governments against the arts over recent decades, writers have sustained the sharpest losses. Apportioned a meagre 2.4 per cent of the entire 2021–22 budget of the Australia Council, literature has been an afterthought in federal arts policy – if any thought can be said to have been dedicated to it at all. In response to this austerity drive, literary institutions have often advanced claims regarding the sector's economic productivity to appeal for increased support from the government: see our contribution to the GDP; look at the jobs! But while it's true that a small cadre of commercially successful writers do help to underwrite a struggling ecosystem of publishing houses, booksellers and festivals, defending literature in utilitarian terms alone cedes almost all the good ground literature has to stand on.

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2022/october/sarah-holland-batt/australians-all-let-us-read-verse

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