The big news this week has been the announcement that the ABC intends to close all of its retail outlets as soon as it can get out of its current leases. ABC Managing Director Mark Scott rather lamely went on Radio National on Monday to lament the fact that the stores are no longer profitable – therefore they have to go. Of course, if you live in a big city you can get your ABC publications, CDs and so on from the remaining decent independent book and record stores, but what about the older customer or those who live further afield? What part, one wonders, of national service provider doesn’t Mark Scott get?

It seems an all too familiar story. If every arts organisation that didn’t turn a profit were to shut up shop it would be a cultural desert out there. Arts centres too often see classical music, theatre and dance as secondary to tourism and bar profits. The typical answer is to let the classical music curator go or to cut the dance programme. Similarly, if mainstream media don’t get enough clicks on arts stories, the answer seems to be lay off the arts journos and...