When Simon Crean recently failed to force a leadership challenge on Julia Gillard, it was widely reported that her anger had been amplified by the fact that she had gone out on a limb in Cabinet to support Crean’s $230 million arts and cultural policy.

There was little Cabinet support for it and Gillard had agreed to help it through, evidently in return for Crean’s ongoing loyalty.

This isn’t surprising. It’s a common malaise. The arts has always suffered as a taxpayer funding priority and it’s always pushed to the bottom of the pile. In this case it had been reduced to a kind of bargaining chip. Well, whatever it takes.

But the Crean/Gillard vignette highlighted yet again that the arts has a public image problem, pushed along in Australia by an inverse snobbery and a tendency to promote its attributes under the title of ‘creativity’ rather than ‘economic development’.

It’s about time the arts went hardcore. It’s time to toughen it up.

And this means the creative geeks have to get out of the way for a while and make way for the die-hard economic imperatives of this industry to take their place in the sun. The truth is, the creative industries are a major contributor to our nation’s wealth. They injected $31.1 billion into our national economy in 2007/08 while the cultural sector overall contributed $93.2 billion – more than agriculture, electricity and gas. The industries also directly employ 531,000 people, or more than 5 per cent of Australia’s total workforce.

These are impressively hardcore statistics. As a communications specialist, I’d say there’s a lot there to work with in terms of lifting its public profile and preventing successive Federal and State Cabinets from showing this industry the scant regard it doesn’t deserve.

The creative industries should be elevated onto a level playing field with the big players – because just imagine how much more the whole industry could grow and how many more jobs it could create and sustain if greater, strategic investments were made in the arts.

When the former Arts Minister Mike Rann annualised the Adelaide Festival, Womadelaide and the Festival Fringe and invested millions in a new SA Film Corp building, the Cabaret Festival, the OzAsia Festival, the Guitar Festival and so forth, it was met with the usual public derision from the commentariat which, politically, never helped his cause. He always had to fight like hell to get extra money for the arts from Kevin Foley and the argument was inevitably won on the basis of the jobs and economic activity it would generate. South Australia’s 10 principal festivals now contribute $63 million to the economy every year and have created 790 full time jobs.

Some Ministers would have preferred to stare straight at the sun than address the obvious plight of the ageing Festival Centre.

When the State Labor Government made the decision to devote a once-in-a generation investment into redeveloping, expanding and revitalising the Riverbank precinct, the Adelaide Festival Centre was disregarded by several key Ministers as just a building that sat within the vicinity.

Some Ministers would have preferred to stare straight at the sun than address the obvious plight of the ageing Festival Centre. And in lock step with Ministers, senior bureaucrats working on the precinct upgrade obliged by drawing up plans that ensured the centre was something to be blanked out and worked around. Rather than treat it as an equal partner in the project, they saw it as an annoyance.

Last weekend the Festival Centre celebrated its 40th anniversary and received a $6 million gift from the Premier for critical infrastructure works. This is a small recognition of the work that needs to be done, but in reality, it will only be enough for a spit and polish.

Operationally, the Adelaide Festival Centre has reached its zenith. Its Board of Trustees headed by the very able Barry Fitzpatrick is working like a well-oiled machine. Its CEO and Artistic Director Douglas Gautier, more valuable to our State than the Cullinan Diamond, has worked hard in the past few years to broaden its appeal to a wider audience and get it working pretty much every night of the year.

People who had never given the Festival Centre a second glance have found themselves turning up and enjoying all kinds of fabulous shows and hanging out at its many late night venues. It’s now attracting into its theatres and precinct shows, 900,000 people a year. Impressively hardcore.

Behind the scenes, in the bowels of the centre, there works a dedicated group of people who keep the centre running with equipment and technology from the last century, installed in service rooms where concrete cancer is quietly grinding away beneath its walls. The building is falling victim to the old malaise – low-priority syndrome.

The only thing that will save the Adelaide Festival Centre and set it on a path for its next 40 years is a Cabinet that’s not afraid to embrace a masterplan (funded by a defiant Mike Rann) for its $420 million redevelopment over the next 10 years.

The AFC is the front and centre of the Riverbank precinct and it needs to be on an equal footing with the other developments blossoming around it. The Festival Centre is our asset. It brings in money and people and creates jobs and enjoyment, it establishes important cultural links to the first Australians, to Asia and beyond and it ignites our creative lives in all kinds of ways.

The Adelaide Festival Centre has served its purposes well for 40 years and now it needs our attention to survive the next 40 years. As the Festival State, South Australia simply cannot afford to leave it behind. And that’s the impressive, hardcore truth.

Jill Bottrall is a communications consultant. She was an adviser to former Premier Mike Rann.

This article was first published on her website.