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Ben Eltham

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Bio

Ben Eltham is a Melbourne-based writer, musician and creative producer. He is a former editor of UQ student newspaper Semper Floreat and writes regularly on Australian arts, culture and politics for publications including New Matilda, Crikey, Artlink, Mess+Noise and The Courier-Mail. He is currently researching a PhD in cultural policy at the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney and co-writing a wide-ranging book on Australian public policy with Miriam Lyons.

Ben also works as a practising artist. His band, Briztronix, released their award-winning third album "Structures of Canyons" in 2007, and he is a Producer for Melbourne-based theatre ensemble Elbow Room, whose play "Venus in Furs" he produced in May 2008.

Ben is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.

Ben Eltham's contributions:

CPD Road Test: home savings accounts

The home savings accounts proposed by Labor and the Coalition will be expensive to maintain and won't have much impact on housing affordability, write Ben Eltham and Anna Tweeddale.


CPD Road Test: australian technical colleges

Why keep two technical training systems on the road when neither is worthy of a pink slip, asks Ben Eltham.


Rethinking Australian foreign policy in a post-Bush world

Both sides are refusing to acknowledge that we will soon be faced with some very difficult strategic foreign policy challenges, writes Ben Eltham in Online Opinion.


Note to ASPI: silence is not a winning strategy

Australia’s defence policy think tank is serving tax-payers poorly. It’s time for a strategic rethink, argues Ben Eltham.


Defence shopping list points to more overseas trips

This week saw a minor flare-up in Australian defence politics, with the release of a video of Australian troops misbehaving in Iraq.

Apart from demonstrating yet again the power of user-generated media websites like YouTube to become powerful news sources in their own right, the episode also showed how hard it is going to be for Prime Minister John Howard to meet his target of 2,600 extra troops for the Australian Army.



ALP arts policy hits the right note but won't rock the suburbs

It may be a dull read, but the ALP's new arts policy discussion paper is the most forward-looking arts policy to emerge from either side of politics since Paul Keating's 'Creative Nation', writes Ben Eltham. PLUS Eltham's musings on the early resignation of Australia Council CEO Jennifer Bott


How to Support Starving Artists

Ben Eltham calls for an urgent rebalance of our cultural investment away from big organizations and towards the creative human capital of our sector. At present individual artists receive 6.3% of Australia Council grant funding, with the rest going to arts organizations. According to Eltham, this imbalance explains the strikingly low average wage for individual artists and the brain drain that results


These are dog days for artists in Australia. But will a new cultural policy help?

Following on from the David Throsby extract published in Policy last week, Ben Eltham writes that the type of art and culture we fund in Australia is largely an accident of history and fashion. He argues that under the current system, large performing arts organisations lobby their budgets into the black while most individual artists get by on Newstart. Instead Eltham calls for a cultural policy prioritising research, innovation, new work, audience development, competitive grant processes and funding for individual artists.




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