Debate and discussion continue about a cultural policy that willtake Australia into the next century, and via multimedia, into every country on earth.

Firstly some background and context. The rapid, recent growth in information and communications technology has meant a new concentration by the Commonwealth Government on communications and cultural policies. The Communication and Arts portfolios were brought together in early 1994. The Minister has responsibility for the development of the telecommunications infrastructure and the cultural industries supporting creative content. There has been the adoption of the view that along with the rapid development in telecommunications networks there needs also to be careful planning of the development of content industries. This balance is needed to ensure that the access to global cultural resources does not overrun the potential of Australian products and services to develop and play a significant part in the anticipated vast menu of user options.

The eventual capacity of interactive multimedia on broadband services will enable everything from accessing the tools of learning for both formal and informal education, shopping, voting, interactive entertainment from games to constructing your own multimedia artworks, video/voice communications for work and social contact to anywhere linked online with computer simulated translation, trading and financial transactions. All this will be possible through the home PC linked online to the post ISDN global network.

Creative infrastructure has become a policy priority for the eventual on line broadband services. In the first national cultural policy Creative Nation, the Commonwealth Government is ensuring that Australia makes the transition to an information economy with a focus on fostering production of Australian content (CN 1994, p.62). It says that interactive multimedia has the potential to become the new force in education, art, culture and service; that its a major product to sell to the world; and that the development of CDROM will mean experience and a skills base to future developments of content for the online broadband market to come (ibid, pp. 55-57).

The most significant benefit will be to end the tyranny of distance that has shaped our culture and our connections within Australia and internationally. In fact it is the issues around how we react culturally to the connections of the local and the global which most effect the new cultural policies. While territories will be borderless there will still be states or nations, but these will be differently constructed and our identity as Australians will be changed and symbolically differently realised.

Digital coding of vast amounts of information into 0,1 patterns means information is compressed, transmitted and retrieved at a fraction of the cost of previous technology. The medium with its element of interactivity, allows the user to become an immediate participant in the creative process and this makes multimedia product different. How readers, audiences, viewers react and respond to cultural product now is a fascinating area of inquiry and can inform the development of multimedia markets. In commercial terms there is anticipated a fracturing of the mass market that has so dominated this century, into diversified and specialised communities of interest, commonly called niche markets. There should be a greater range of choice but a number of restraints apply.

As with the past there will be an economic dominance of the US and Western Europe in the capacity to invest, produce and most importantly to distribute to this new global market. How do we compete with the high levels of financial investment in development of products like electronic games for instance? In Australia the balance of cultural trade is still strongly tilted towards imports, which are about 4.5 times the value of exports in 1992-3 (ABS 1994 ). To a large extent this is explained by patterns of distribution and this is particularly so for the new CDROM products. To overcome this principle government advisers, Cutler and Co. for example, propose working as part of the 20 major international companies to ensure a market return on Australian CDROM production. They argue the cost per title is now $250,000 and with full video $1 million plus. If Australia has 5% of the global investment budgets of these major firms then this would mean a commission of 250 high end titles (entertainment & games interactivity) and $250 million in professional services income for local developers. They speculate on 5% of global production which is 2,500 titles but unless Australia has distribution these CDROM products would not reach the market, and apparently this is the fate of lots of CDROM products (Cutler & Co 1994, p.18).

It is sobering to note that the returns to creators is very low in publishing now, with excessive costs in the value-added chain between content creator and content consumer. Cutler & Co. warn the "any policy prescription of government action must focus on understanding forces at work in this global value-added chain" (ibid, p.20). There are parallels in the feature film industry where the returns to Australian producers of US box office and video earnings is negligible because of the agents' and distributors' costs.

Will all this lead to a future culture in Australia that is a "sea of globalised and homogenised mediocrity" (CN 1994, p.7) and a loss of a sense of national identity? These are the key questions for cultural policy in addressing interactive multimedia. By 1996 there will be 1 million households in Australia with multimedia capacity PC's which can connect to the network via $100 modem cards. Australian multimedia products will have to be relevant and useful, and distribution will have to be viable and at competing price levels. There must be an export component of Australian products and services to ensure an 'Australian identity' recognised by global others but this is a highly political concept and will remain a terrain of intense struggle over representation.

Australia's first cultural policy Creative Nation is a bit like a press release and a shopping list where the cultural policy directives are not fully expanded. The specific multimedia programs aim to catch up on high quality skills training of the talent pool through the tertiary Co-operative Multimedia Centres and special budgets for the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and the Australian Film Commission. There is a venture capital fund of $45 million for new products but little detail of its specific targets. There is also the encouragement of the youth consumer market through providing each school with 4 CDROMs of Australian material and seed funding to the Australian Children's Television Foundation for development of high quality educational multimedia products.

The Content in Commerce Report, (which with the Broadband Expert Service Group's Interim Report are the basis for the cultural policy multimedia programs), emphasises the role of government in improving the quality and quantity of audio-visual graduates and ensuring a sound copyright administration enviroment, as prerequisites to content industry development. The eventual hope is that the major international companies will locate in Australia part of their operation, using this talent and the online network to send their product out globally from Australia.

What does an elite talent development model with little flexibility in entry to the industry and limited experimentation do for the other major economic goal of growth in employment in the cultural industries? Surely it is just as efficient to audit the current levels of underemployed creators in all the cultural areas relevant to multimedia (writers, visual artists, imagemakers, sound artists and musicians, independent film, video creators) and give support that will add to their already considerable capacity to deliver a range of innovative new products. The main problem at the moment is who decides what is innovative and marketable, and how can the creators be assisted to distribute and market their ideas.

There is conflict too in serving international companies if content reflecting Australian cultural identity is the major objective. The Commerce in Content proposal admits that it sees this as of little importance rather that "multimedia product will need to be tailored and adapted to the culture of each overseas market" (Cutler & Co. 1994, p.29).

There needs to be a dual policy objective of integrity and diversity of Australian product which can only be defined as made by Australians, whatever their international components. Diversity of the creative production base, flexibility in entering the field, experimenting with new products for differentiated audiences and a vast range of products should be the goals. This is just as likely to build new audiences, a market and an income base.

In conclusion. The new broadband services are a new challenge to Australia. Responding to demand in providing what is relevant and useful will be of greater importance to this new industry than has been the case in much of the government promoted Australian cultural products and services of the past. The commercial market will change too from its mass market orientation to diversify to meet more directly consumer choices and interests. It is important to be realistic about our small market and the difficulties of competing in this area of high level financial investment. Australia must find unique and sustainable production and distribution avenues to participate not just as consumers but as producers of new products and services. Access for creative consumers and creative producers should be all inclusive.

We should learn from the experience of user patterns of the telephone, fax and email; the regulation and subsidy problems of the broadcasting investments of the past; the difficulties in distribution of Australian feature films penetrating overseas markets; and the export success of the individual entrepreneurs in the music and visual arts industries, including the terms of that success. This is an exciting opportunity for Australia to be globally connected and to benefit from access to new information through an exciting interactive framework. Just as long as the communication is a two (or 3,4,5 to infinity) way relationship.

Interactive multimedia means changes to the big picture for Australia's cultural future. The global will be just as accessible as the local. There will be a need for a cultural industry that is enterprising, particularly in exporting Australian product. This enterprise and ingenuity is more likely if there is an opportunity for the broadest range of creative producers to be involved and the widest range of Australian products and services.

Barbara Allen is an arts producer, administrator and editor interested in contemporary cultural policy, currently employed at the National Association for the Visual Arts.

First version of this paper delivered at the Multimedia Forum at Matinaze 95, a project of Sydney Intermedia Network.

Bibliography

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 1994, Cultural Trends in Australia, Commonwealth of Australia

Commonwealth of Australia 1994, Creative Nation (CN)

Cutler & Company 1994, Commerce in Content, Building Australia's International Future in Interactive Multimedia Markets. A report for the Dept. Industry, Science and Technology, CSIRO and the Broadband Services Expert Group.

Interim Report Broadband Services Expert Group 1994, Networking Australia's Future, Commonwealth of Australia.

© Barbera Allen. MESH#5 Summer, 1995. MESH film/video/media/art is the journal of Experimenta Media Arts