Veteran theatre critic and publisher, Katharine Brisbane, now 89, has written the latest Platform Paper for Currency House, which she founded in 2000. Entitled On the Lessons of History, it assesses the major issues and disruptions facing Australian arts and culture this century.

To consider On the Lessons of History, Brisbane looked back over the challenges and views expressed by the leading artists and cultural experts who have authored Currency House’s previous 62 Platform Papers, among them Robyn Archer, Andrew Bovell, Ben Eltham, Wesley Enoch, Jane Harrison, Lindy Hume, Lee Lewis, Julian Meyrick, Lyndon Terracini and David Throsby.

The new Platform Paper will be launched on 24 March by Wesley Enoch. Brisbane will be introduced by her daughter, Dr Harriet Parsons, who will succeed her mother as the new Director of Currency House. Julian Meyrick is the new General Editor.

In the following extract from On the Lessons of History, Brisbane addresses “Black Friday” – as the arts called 13 May, 2016 – a devastating day of reckoning when over 60 small to medium arts organisations discovered they had been defunded after the Arts Minister, George Brandis, diverted funding from the Australia Council to an “excellence fund” under his own control...