SPEECH - LABOR'S ARTS POLICY LAUNCH - THE ESPY, MELBOURNE - 16 MAY 2022

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Here in St Kilda, we are on the Bunerong land, where elders past and present have practiced culture, art, dance, song since the first sunrise.

Here in St Kilda we are in the Gershwin Room at the Espy, one of Australia’s most iconic music venues.

And here in St Kilda, in the corner of Albert Park, behind Junction Oval, just as you hit the Queens Way on ramp from St Kilda Rd, is a cornerstone of Australian culture.

At first it looks like scrub. To some it would look like a spot they forgot to concrete. As the heavy vehicles roar past you’d think only Darryl Kerrigan could feel the serenity.

But this spot of remnant bush wasn’t left intact by accident. It’s not waiting for a development application. It has witnessed art older than the National Gallery. It’s heard songlines that even predate the Gershwin Room - notwithstanding Brian Nankervis’ claim at Rockwiz Live that the Espy was transferred brick by brick from Ancient Egypt. And the spot I’m talking about will be here long after we are.

Very few drivers realise they are accelerating past the oldest living thing in Melbourne. 

The Bunurong Corroboree Tree, or 'Ngargee' Tree.

An ancient red gum thought to be between 300 and 500 years old.

WIth leaves still soaking in energy and roots deep, deep into the land of the Kulin nation.

That the tree belongs in place and on country - matters.

That it lives - matters.

That it grows - matters.

It has stood guard over every change, every ceremony, every battle, every conversation of pain or love, that has occurred beneath its boughs, and within it’s sight. It has stayed, flourished, and grown.

Stories can be universal. Emotions, and ideas can ricochet around the globe. But everything starts with place. Every story, work of art, movement, harmony or discord starts in a place.

And that’s why I want to talk today about cultural policy.

Because creativity that comes from this land isn’t important simply based on whether the rest of the world takes notice.

It isn’t important simply because of its commercial value, although the economic contribution of our creatives is immense.

To Australians, our creativity should matter simply because it’s ours. It happens here. Its roots drive deep into our home. Our stories matter because they are ours. And I am determined to shine a spotlight on our artwork, have our poetry spoken, our literature read, to fill the stalls and dress circles of our theatres, see the names of Australian creatives as the credits roll on screen, and crank up the volume to 11 for our music.

As I look back at the past nine years, I see artists producing great work despite a government that didn’t really care.

The nearly decade old story has the narrative arc of a war movie. Brandis, to Fifield, to Fletcher. From sabotage, to neglect, to attack. With the people on the front line producing heroic work despite the best efforts of the three consecutive generals.

Brandis sabotaged the capacity of the Australia Council to deliver for small to medium companies and independent artists.

Fifield turned up smiled, sang, and got back to work on the communications part of the portfolio that he cared more about. Although there was the push for parallel importation of books which would have attacked the incomes of our authors and poets. We stood with you and stopped it.

Fletcher. Ahh Paul Fletcher. When he came in I told many of you that this was good news and he’d be terrific. Sorry. Got that wrong.

The past three years has seen a brutal attack on the sector at the worst possible time.

I’m glad we had wage subsidies. Labor called for wage subsidies even when Scott Morrison was describing Anthony Albanese’s proposal as “very dangerous”. So I’m glad JobKeeper was put in place.

But if you wanted to design a wage subsidy to exclude as many arts workers as possible, JobKeeper is what you would come up with. It could have been easily amended. And the $20 billion they wasted on businesses that had rising profits during the pandemic would have more than paid for a system that didn’t leave arts workers behind. 

Weeks earlier you had been asked to work for free at bushfire benefits and you did. When the rest of the country had needed you, you had our back. When you needed the rest of the country, there was too little, too late.

And then to defend what the government had done, Paul Fletcher cited the total dollar value of how much they were spending on the sector. Except in order to boost his numbers he included as arts workers people who work in zoos, and everyone who works in clothing retail. I used to work directly with the shop assistants at Myer, Target and Best and Less. They do important work. They would be surprised to know that Paul Fletcher is their minister.

So we fought for you. The government denied there was a problem. After 100 days the government acknowledged more was required and made the announcement in Western Sydney with Guy Sebastian. I have the deepest respect for all the artists and professionals including Guy who campaigned for a better deal for their fellow arts workers. I have no respect for the way they were used by a government that offered words of care on the day of announcement before returning to neglect. After the announcement, no money flowed for 100 days, and when it did, in some cases it took a year to reach arts workers.

In my time as Arts Minister and the years since when I’ve held the Shadow Portfolio I always presumed the economic value of the arts was self-evident and the political divide was only over the cultural value of your work. I was plain wrong. 

Scott Morrison was not even accepting you are workers. Not accepting your businesses are real businesses. Not accepting the courses you did have led to real jobs. Not realising that the discipline of learning and refining your craft, sometimes with practice and training that began in childhood is of real value.

And then came the attack on the screen industry. The Government tried to halve Australian content on Foxtel. We stood with you and stopped it. They have already flagged they want to try again.

The attack on new screen production was perhaps the most extraordinary. Paul Fletcher said you could have something good: an increased offset for TV productions. But only if you had a cut in the support for feature film, the end of the Gallipoli clause and new thresholds which meant the end of support for documentaries and post production.

As the debate bounced between the Houses of Parliament here was one person threatening to burn the house down. One person threatening he was willing to hold the pipeline for future TV productions hostage. One person announcing the bill would pass in full or not at all.

That person was Paul Fletcher. Holder of the title Minister for an Arts Department that no longer exists.

With the support of every party and every independent except for the Liberals and Nationals we stood with you and won.

But stopping the worst legislative moves is not enough.

That’s simply the demo where we had to stand in front of the bulldozer.

The question for a better future is how do we rebuild.

Parts of the sector are recovering quickly. Some aren’t. The failure to tailor wage subsidies for the sector has meant there are many workers in specialised skills who we relied on three years ago who have left the industry forever.

You have told me stories of skills you can’t find, of equipment that was sold to pay down debt and of venues that have closed.

Every two months the situation has been radically different. Every two months I’ve looked back at what I would have wanted my policy offering to be and have realised the needs of the sector have changed, yet again.

So today I’m not going to focus on spending announcements designed to get me through the week. I want to get the structures and policy back on track quickly, and then tailor later funding decisions directly to cultural policy. 

You’ve had too long where it’s all about the announcement and never a careful plan to rebuild.

I know this election some lobbying has been done by a group that is focussed on how many dollars we throw around as the test of commitment. I want to use the capacity and resources of government to plan quickly and to make sure that every dollar we commit is correctly targeted. I want the structures to be right. And I want the interaction with other policy areas to be right. Too much has changed in the past two years to do this in the wrong order.

RISE involved immense dollars. No one can tell me it was terribly well targeted. Where it landed, it helped. But whether you made it or not was less like a strategic decision and more like the Argentinian lottery known as the Foundation Eva Peron.

Remember the line from Evita “Now critics say a little of the cash has gone astray, ahh but that’s not the point my friends.”

I hope Guns N’ Roses enjoy their time in Australia.

The attacks on the sector haven’t only been from Arts Ministers. It was the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg who designed JobKeeper to exclude so many arts workers. It was Alan Tudge as Education Minister who claimed the courses that formed your qualifications don’t lead to real jobs. And it was Scott Morrison who couldn’t even announce money for arts workers without saying it was justified because tradies also worked on site.

It’s a reminder that the person you might regard as “your” minister isn’t the only one who can have a profound impact on your careers and businesses. But there’s a reason the attack has come from so many portfolios.

You see, a cultural policy isn’t simply an arts policy.  Cultural policies have only been developed in Australia by Labor Governments. Paul Keating and his Arts Minister Michael Lee developed Creative Nation. Julia Gillard and her Arts Minister Simon Crean developed Creative Australia.

In each case it was a whole of government exercise. Because anyone who understands the sector know arts isn’t simply about entertainment, leisure and hobbies. At its best it affects our education policy, our health policy, our trade, our relations around the world, our industrial relations approach and is a driver of economic growth. 

When George Brandis replaced me as Arts Minister, they didn’t change the cultural policy to something more conservative. They abolished it and replaced it with nothing. For nearly a decade there has been no cultural policy guiding the advice of departments or the decisions of ministers.

Instead we have had a culture war. Attacks on artists as workers. Attacks on the universities and TAFE colleges that train them. And attacks on the institutions including the Australia Council and the ABC which support their work. Our collecting institutions were left to fall into disrepair.

An Albanese Government will restore cultural policy and end the culture war.

Last time it took nearly six years to develop Creative Australia. I had six months to implement it. And within six minutes of the Liberals and Nationals winning, it was gone.

The sector has been through its hardest time ever. We don’t have six years. So instead of starting with a blank page a Labor Government will use Creative Australia as the starting document and immediately work with you to update it. 

If we win this Saturday, Australia will have cultural policy reviewed, revived and relaunched this year.

This will allow us to get the structures right, and take into account the rapid changes that are happening in the sector right now.

I do want to make clear some of the issues I want fixed in the new cultural policy. Creative Australia was built on five pillars that were listed in this order:

• The centrality of the artist

• The diversity of the nation

• First Nations

• Strong institutions

• Not well defined, a bit of tech, a bit of international, a bit messy really

Those concepts are all sound, but I have a firm view that the order needs to reflect the extraordinary cultural strength that is unique to this continent. We have the oldest continuing cultural practices on the planet. The first pillar of Australia’s cultural policy should be First Nations.

First Nations first.

We need to restore co-operation and dialogue between the Federal Minister and State Ministers. The engagement which should involve local government as well has collapsed under Scott Morrison and Paul Fletcher.

We need to return to a system where artistic merit is determined by peers, not by the personal views of the Minister of the day. Like democracy, the Australia Council is the worst system in the world, except for all the others.

I want to merge Creative Partnerships back into the Australia Council. This will bring private sector expertise and the philanthropic sector back to the centre of Australia Council work.

I want this year to examine and try to negotiate with the states an insurance system for the sector. COVID and the regulations which have been brought about to manage it have created a real financial risk that cannot be commercially insured. It is having an immediate impact on whether promoters, artists, or businesses believe they can take on commercial risk. They’ve been asking for a government response since 2020 and all they’ve heard from Scott Morrison and Paul Fletcher is “that’s not my job”. We need to try to get this moving.

In 2013 I debated George Brandis at a Screen Producers Event and I raised my concern that it wouldn’t be too long before we were watching the internet through our TVs and we needed to find a way to support Australian content. George Brandis looked at me condescendingly, (hard to believe I know) and said I clearly didn’t understand the issues.

We have now lost a decade where we don’t see enough Australian content streaming on our TVs and we don’t hear enough Australian music in our headphones. Even our authors have been hit by the changes with libraries moving to Ebooks. We need our settings updated for modern technology.

This is urgent. Australia must not be forever confined to someone else’s stories and someone else’s soundtrack.

And the value of tickets should be for the people putting on the show. To pay for the artists, the venue, the technicians, the roadies, the cleaners, the ushers, the security staff. It’s not to pay for Viagogo. Labor will work with the state and territory arts ministers to stamp out businesses that sell fake tickets, that rip off consumers, that sever the relationship between the artist and their audience.

And Labor’s Minister for the Arts will have responsibility for a department with the word Arts proudly in its title.

All this is in addition to the commitments we have already announced to establish the National Aboriginal Art Gallery in Alice Springs, the Frankston Arts Trail, Macleay Island Arts Centre, Fremantle Creative Hub, Campsie Cultural Hub, Nairm Marr Djambana, Southern Highlands Regional Art Gallery, the PIP Theatre, to do the work to plan for an expansion of Double J, and to reverse Scott Morrison’s cut to the ABC.

There is merit in having the jobs and opportunities that come with Hollywood productions being filmed here.

It is important for our artists and our audiences to have a home in Australia for the greatest international works of music, of theatre, of dance, of opera for the greatest artworks to tour here and live here. It is important for the great musicals and shows that are electrifying the world to come here to thrill our audiences and inspire our creators. And the composer or playwright is not the only artist. Australian creativity is on display in the performers, the directors and conductors, the costume and set designers.

Many great Australian works won’t be set here. Colleen McCollough took us to ancient Rome, Christos Tsiolkas to Damascus, Hannah Kent to Iceland and Ireland, Baz Lurhmann to Paris and a central American Verona. But we watched it all through an Australian lens. The works were still ours.

But I’ll admit, I want more. 

I want us to also see ourselves. To see each other.

Most of you won’t know the Young Adult Fiction Novel The F Team by Rarwa Arja. But it spoke to the school age boys in my home town of Punchbowl. They read about sport, saw their local story on the page and smiled at the passing reference to Australia’s largest poetry gathering at Bankstown.

In Hearts and Bones Melbourne’s African Australian community saw a story of their own onscreen.

Kate Grenville took us to the Hawkesbury for the Secret River and Craig Silvey and Trent Dalton took us to Brisbane for Jasper Jones and Boy Swallows Universe for novels that became plays destined for the screen.

 Jonathan Jones and Badger Bates have explained the environmental catastrophe in the Murray Darling in images that roar.

And the graduates of NAISDA fill Bangarra productions and serve to preserve, promote, develop and create dance traditions around Australia.

The small and medium companies create and innovate and challenge and tell us more and more about the stories, emotions, and ideas that might have never otherwise been given voice.

The test of these companies isn’t whether their work migrates to other companies or larger venues. The small and medium companies, the independent artists are cultural pillars themselves, they are destinations in their own right.

And the commentary and storytelling of our suburbs and regions that came from Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel, Paul Kelly, the Divinyls, and Magic Dirt, still finds new melodies from Alex the Astronaut, Gordi, Alex Lahey, Amy Shark, DZ Deathrays, the Kid Laroi, AB Original, Dallas Woods, Tones and I, Middle Kids, and Gang of Youths.

I want more of this. I want our work to be the soundtrack to our lives, the sounding board for our stories, the canvas for our hearts.

The attack on the sector can end. It can end this Saturday.

We have a leader in Anthony Albanese who loves, respects and values your work. How often in Australian politics have we had questions from the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament demanding a better deal for arts workers? Anthony has never hesitated in the same way none of us hesitates to draw breath.

There’s a better future where we plan together.

A better future where we work together.

A better future where you are valued as creators, as artists, as workers.

And the brain is ready to back the heart.

Because what we so broadly call the arts act both as our pulse, and our oxygen supply.

If science tells us why we are here, the arts tell us how we are here - and remind us why we want to be here.

The arts are the telescope turned inwards, focused on the many universes we carry within and the worlds we make.

The roots of the Bunurong Corroboree Tree run deep. One day the Queens Way on ramp will have to be replaced and upgraded, but the Corroboree tree roots will still be strong. Strong and growing deeper.

And the objective is simply this.

If we get it right, more cars will pull over and people will stop to spend a moment in the shade of that tree. People who didn’t even know the magnificence of our own cultural riches, will know, will stop, and will savour.

More moments when we appreciate the richness of the creativity which lives on this land and which grows and thrives on the richness of this land.

More moments when we refuse to sleep because we have to finish another chapter, choose the local film, listen to the local band, see our performers on stage, glance at our art and find when we glance at the work, the heart refuses to let the legs move a step away from the canvas.

I want that.

I want people to know what we have - and cherish it.

We can do that. We need to.

Because our artists, our art, our creatives, our creativity.

Deeply affect how we know ourselves.

How we know each other.

And how the world knows us.