There’s a lot you can do that doesn’t cost a great deal, but it makes you visible in your community, it builds trust, it builds connections, and it builds loyalty – and that in turn builds your brand, which increases the value of your business, and improves your reputation.

Now arts sponsorship can achieve similar things for you, too. Many of you will know that last year Saatchi & Saatchi completed a huge research project for the Australia Council for the Arts, and it gave us some valuable insights into how Australians think about the arts, and a real sense of what works and what doesn’t in arts sponsorships.

Our artistic community is absolutely vital to social cohesion. They tell us our stories – who we are – how we became the way we are – they thrill us, inspire us, move us and make our national identity tangible to us.

So if you want to thrill and inspire and move your customers, maybe an arts sponsorship is the way to go – but if you accept the principles I’ve been talking about tonight, then you’ll think about supporting the arts in a totally new light.

Our research indicated that the general public is pretty cynical about arts sponsorships – they regard them as treats for elites – the mechanism by which the chardonnay set gets their photo in the social pages, but if you approach supporting the arts with a view towards making a contribution towards social cohesion, you might take a very different approach.

You could take your most important clients along to a performance, with the dreaded cocktail party to follow – but hey - let’s get creative.

Create events in your workplace, in your community, in your biggest customers’ workplace, at your local high school. Involve them in your export programme – your advertising campaign (look at the great campaign for Intel with New York’s Blue Man Group for an inspiring way to use artists).

The business community needs to rethink its approach to arts sponsorship – too much of what we do is safe, predictable, contributes nothing to the community, and is of limited promotional value.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

By supporting our artistic community, and using that support to demonstrate our commitment to building social cohesion, and by maintaining that commitment over time, we can begin to rebuild trust in our brands, businesses, and reputations.

Most artists earn less than your secretary – and many artists have the capacity to make a contribution to restoring and maintaining the social cohesion that ensures the stable operating environment we all need.

The tribal elders here this evening (including me) have a particular responsibility for increasing shareholder value, but it seems to me that over time, we have come to define value much more narrowly than I suspect was originally intended. Value is a lot more than the cost of something. We tell our children that – perhaps we should demonstrate that we believe it to be true.

We hear a lot about leadership these days – but mostly it seems to be in the context of its absence. I come from a slightly different perspective – leadership, for me, is a matter of personal responsibility. I’m an immensely privileged person to have had the freedom to have lived the life I have, and that means I have a personal responsibility to make a contribution to this country I love.

To those leaders in waiting who’ve graced us with their presence this evening, can I say that business is a broad church. If an ageing leftie like me can make it, then there’s hope for us all. Leadership is both a privilege and a pleasure, and the opportunity to give something back to the communities that sustained us along the way is one of its chief joys.

That’s something that those of us in leadership positions now need to remember, and those of you who succeed us should never forget.