The reason is that one consequence of the decision to slash the number of government departments from 18 to 14 is that the arts no longer get featured billing in a department title.

Up until now the search for truth and beauty, along with the other creative and cultural pursuits, nestled alongside the media within the Department of Communications and the Arts.

Come February that won't be the case. The arts will become just one small facet within the super-sized Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications.

Critics have likened the change to being declared an unperson in an Orwellian dystopia.

"Arts ceases to exist," ABC presenter Virginia Trioli tweeted on Thursday. "Name, portfolio, federal government focus - gone."

Given the apparent lack of consultation with the leadership of the department ahead of the decision to relegate it to such a subordinate role, we can only speculate as to whether or not any thought was given to the synergies that may result.

Are we going to see the establishment of an art gallery in every regional community? Will bands of itinerant troubadours, cut loose from their various opera, theatre and ballet companies and orchestras as their funds dry up, soon be calling the roads their home as they trudge from one gig to the next? What is the likelihood of a constellation of mobile phone and NBN antennae blossoming on the top of the Melbourne Arts Centre spire? The possibilities are endless.

What were they thinking? Most Australians over the age of 55 have no difficulty in recalling what a cultural wasteland this country was only two short generations ago. It had been obligatory for almost two centuries for our best musicians, painters, singers, dancers, poets, authors and performers to make a pilgrimage to England or Europe as part of their professional development.

Our greatest opera singers, Melba, Bronhill and Sutherland, did not achieve fame and fortune in Sydney or Melbourne. They had to be sanctified by a European success before their talents were fully appreciated at home.

Writers such as the late Clive James and Barry Humphries have both borne witness to the insular and monocultural intellectual desert that was Australia in the immediate post-war period.

Sir Les Paterson, amongst other things arguably Humphries's greatest creation and "the Minister for the Yartz", is a parody of that time.

We have, fortunately, come a long way since then. The construction of the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne Arts Centre, the evolution of our major state and national art galleries, the emergence of a literature not entirely preoccupied with the travails of drover's wives, floods and drought, and the emergence of world class cultural institutions are all signs we have come of age.

Australia's vibrant modern arts scene, which receives only modest state support compared with many European nations, reflects our growing diversity and has helped move foreign perceptions of Australia along from the "put another prawn on the barbie" and outback stereotypes.

The arts are both a mirror and a window that offer up alternative visions of the national experience to ourselves and to others.

As such it is a given they should be valued much more highly than they seem to be by the Morrison government.