It is reported that 37 of BRW’s 100 Young Rich multimillionaires for 2006 pursued creative endeavours. This provides inspiration for the more than 950,000 Australians who found work in the arts and cultural sector last financial year. Such figures also challenge the pervasive view that the arts are economically insignificant. Minor compared to some industries, perhaps, but the arts and cultural sector amounted to $12.8 billion over 2005-06, helped along by 7.8 million adults who attended arts performances and 3.6 million who visited galleries.

These statistics, like the QUT research, underscore the substantial talent and potential of Australian artists making it big on the world stage. There has never been a more crucial time for transforming this potential into long-term success. A digital, globalised future is blurring the boundaries between individual creative practice, collaboration and commercial opportunities. Exploiting these opportunities requires sustainable risk-taking, imagining new audiences instead of playing to old ones, and fostering a vision that extends beyond the next Centrelink payday.

The BRW rich list rightly showcases the high-achievers, but it is far from a representative sample of creative Australians. Three years ago, the Australia Council published a more sobering perspective on professional arts practice, finding that half of Australia’s artists in 2000-01 earned below $7,300 from their endeavours, with half existing on less than $30,000 total income. Moreover, these income levels had stagnated in real terms for some 15 years, a time when average incomes in other professional occupations consistently increased. This is a reality that rich lists do not reflect, and it is one that we need to change.

It may seem incongruous to talk about income security in the arts and cultural sector where risk-taking is often a modus operandi. However, it is only through providing creative Australians with the breathing space to innovate that long-term cultural and financial value will be created.

In the 21st century, risk is the buzzword of choice in countless management handbooks and strategy sessions. So-called ‘blue sky’ projects are undertaken to harness the creative energies of employees, recognising that collaboration and inspiration doesn’t begin and end with a job description. Companies such as IBM have set up autonomous ‘skunk works’ divisions, encouraging rogue creativity outside of corporate hierarchies. These businesses understand that while the rewards of creativity are very real, creative processes are fragile, sometimes appearing subversive to the traditional ways of doing things.

The Howard Government prides itself on its close and responsive relationship to the business world. But try talking to this government about the subversive side of creativity and you’ll get short shrift. I’ve noted previously that Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott two years ago described abstract artworks in the parliamentary collection as “avant-garde crap.” His then colleague, Liberal MP Ross Cameron, was more expansive, heralding a revision of the Parliament’s collection policy as “a victory over this little clique of correct, highbrow, holier-than-thou, ‘you-must-like-this-shit’ brigade.”

In a recent cultural outing, the Prime Minister lauded Quadrant magazine as “Australia’s home to all that is worth preserving in that Western cultural tradition.” John Howard’s lavish praise for this conservative publication with a small circulation offered little consolation to creative Australians. With the local film industry lacking the support and structural synergy to fulfil its potential, theatre and dance companies perpetually on the verge of financial crisis and visual artists contending with accusations of elitism, the Prime Minister’s remarks said more about the constricted prism through which his government views creativity than the value of Quadrant’s poetry and essays.

If Quadrant magazine is the touchstone of cultural value in John Howard’s Australia, the implications for innovation across the board are bleak. It is worth remembering that every tradition started as innovation, in many cases as an avant-garde. An Impressionists’ collection containing works derided in their time as “an insult to the taste and intelligence of the public” would not have survived the Tony Abbott test of elitism. However, such works would undoubtedly be popular additions to the present parliamentary collection. If IBM’s ‘skunk works’ division relied on yearly grant applications and short-term efficiency targets, innovation would soon give way to replication. This is why risk management is about more than avoiding unwanted outcomes – it is about creating new possibilities.

Private sector investment in the arts is always welcome, with the potential to transform short-term risks into long-term rewards. Such collaboration, supported by targeted tax concessions and research and development funding, is significant, not only financially but also for the nation’s collective life and cultural future.

The prospects for Australia’s arts community will not be determined by rich lists. They will be determined by the sustainability of everyday artistic practice, by creative young people with the courage and support to take calculated cultural risks. If we happen to turn out a few multimillionaires in the process, all the better.