Obviously the bent most people have for pop culture will force the more refined arts to become market failures. Music today is vulnerable as it inevitably has sunk to the lowest common denominator leading to talentless trash product like American/Australian idol screeching and moaning dominating the airwaves.

Culture has been executed by drivel media and poker machines, pubs are no longer the venues for live bands, councils can no longer afford regular concerts in the park, artists cannot sell their wares on the streets.

Orchestral music is part of our heritage. More money is given to sports and I certainly dont care if we do not have an Olympic team , yet as a tax payer I support them. Motor races too are reliant on public funding , yet without complaint we are willing to forego hospital beds and education for the sake of a tiny minority of sports fans. Only Horse racing seems to be able to raise funds off its own back.

I say if we stop funding Orchestras we must stop funding all forms of entertainment including sport. But if we really want somebody to swim really fast so that all nations can see we have the capability and the will power and the resources to train somebody to swim really fast, then we must also support orchestras and all arts and entertainment besides.

As a lover of music, especially the style generally (and innacurately) known as 'classical' I would argue that the failure of music audiences to expand in proportion to population growth derives largely from the considerable cost associated with attending concerts, together with the 'intellectualising' of mainstream music. Music in essence consists of melody, harmony, rythmn, and form - something that every music student knows but it seems is largely forgotten by modern day composers. Despite the efforts of many composers to keep music intellectually accessible - ie pleasant and/or inspiring to listen to - most late twentieth century formal composers for the most part produce cacophonous rubbish masquerading as contemporary art - all for the head, nothing for the heart. Modern formal music has sacrificed both the power to inspire and to entertain, and seems to rely for its effect on its power to shock and offend the ear. Who wants to pay for that?

I love the old classical music - Beethoven etc are newbies.

The didgerido and clapsticks are about as classical as one can get.

From the article “Our nation needs its governments to broaden the appeal and reach of classical music because it will make us a better society.”

Government is not there to “make a better society” but to reflect the society which is.

Not that I am anti-classical music.

My radio is tuned to ABC FM and I enjoy and prefer “the Marriage of Figaro” over “Desperate Housewives”.

However, any fool who thinks a better society is shaped by enforced absorption of the classics is just an elitist pratt, full of self arrogance and with barely veiled contempt for the taste and likings of his fellows.

We need to give people the opportunity to discover what they like, be it classical music or modern art. That does not mean promoting one media over another it might mean withdrawing funds from the favoured few and leaving the money in the pockets of tax payers to make up their own mind on how their philanthropic bequests and cultural interests will better be made as private individuals, than being forced to subsidise political tosser of an art minister’s poor taste in playing lord or lady bountiful with tax payers funds..

Whilst Whitlam played the same game with Jackson Pollack’s “Blue Poles”, I think personally, the money would have been far better spent on a Canaletto or Botticelli or even a Barbara Hepworth. But since it was “tax payers funds” we, the great unwashed, were not consulted, just stuck with the bill.

I recall the debacle of the blue trees of Melbourne under another ex-ABC news presenter who departed her public ministerial office under a cloud (of incompetence) following a contemptible waste of tax payer resources.

Art Ministers and Tax funded orchestras are examples of the sort of "Big Government" which we would be better off without.

"Small government" leaves the cash with the individual to decide.

Another point, Pericles, is that the people who benefit most from government subsidies for opera, ballet and classical music are the well-off, who could easily afford to pay the real cost of their pleasures. I would be more sympathetic if the situation remained as it did in Victorian times, when Bernard Shaw had to travel to Germany in order to hear Wagner's music, but anyone who wants to listen to a particular classical piece these days is much more likely to find it on an inexpensive CD or a music download than played live. Concert-going these days is more of a social event than a necessary educational experience.

Hopefully government subsidies for the pleasures of the wealthy is a concept that reached its use-by date last November.

Perhaps its best to just let consumers decide, what they actually
like. They will soon vote with their wallets. Sorry, but classical
music for me is a turn off, yet Elton John playing with the
Melbourne Symphony Orcherstra sounds great IMHO. I bought the cd.

Some of the Beatles evergreens played by orchestras, IMHO sound
fantastic, but I have no taste for the old composers.

If Greg wants to listen to Brahms, Beethoven etc, well good on him,
but why should Govt spend endless money on deciding what kind of
music that people should enjoy?