Subjects: Role of Arts in Australian Society, Nugent Report
PRIME MINISTER:
Well thank you very much Margaret Seares, to Jennifer Bott to Richard Alston and Peter McGauran, my other parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
Can I say immediately that confronted as I am over the next eleven days and beyond with the task of familiarising and warming the hearts of the Australian community towards tax reform, I drew incredible inspiration from the quality of the performance of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus. The quality of their balance, the intricate way in which they dealt with the detail of their routine was a source of extraordinary inspiration.
Can I say when Richard asked me to launch this report which is being prepared by Sacchi and Sacchi on behalf of the Australia Council I agreed very readily because it would give me an opportunity to not only encourage the arts community and the broader Australian community to embrace a wider view of the role of the arts in Australian society but it was also an opportunity for me to say very directly to this representative gathering the very high priority that the Government places on supporting the arts within Australian society.
For good reason which I won't dwell on today at this gathering, much of what is said about the Government I lead relates to our programs of economic change and reform but there is of course to government as there is to life another dimension other than sustenance and efficiency and productivity and economic performance. There are also the other aspects of life and the role of the arts in Australian society seen perhaps stereotyped as being a society overwhelmingly preoccupied with materialism, with sporting pleasures and others of a non-artistic kind you all know that it's a very important element of our existence and our being and essence as Australians to embrace and to practice our love of the arts.
The Government has persistently demonstrated its support for that and I was very happy to lend my very strong support to Richard Alston when he brought the recommendations surrounding the Nugent Report to budget Cabinet. The reality is that if you are serious as a government and a community about the arts there will always need to be a measure of tax payer and public subsidy and public support.
I am as strong as anybody in promoting the view that the private sector should pay its part and make a contribution. And we certainly in all of our policies in relation to the arts have endeavoured to do that. But side by side with that must sit and ongoing commitment from public sector to provide support. And I hope that the arts community and the broader Australian community will see in our response to the Nugent Report in the budget a manifestation of that belief and of that commitment.
It was in 1997 that the Australia Council recognised that although there had been a large body of behavioural research within the arts community very little work had actually been done to measure how Australians beyond existing audiences and the arts community actually felt about the arts. And in a sense this document, ÔAustralians and the Arts' is all about that journey of discovery and finding out what the rest of the Australian community thought and through that process, to encourage them to be part of the enjoyment of the Arts to mould the presentation of the Arts, the content of what is produced, the way in which it is communicated to the broader community.
The purpose of the research as I understand it was to provide an insight in to the emotional and other responses to the Arts which was the heart of community attitude. Saatchi and Saactchi found that the key challenges facing the Arts community was to better communicate with the general population. That is so often the finding of research in relation to just about any community activity. They made three fundamental point in their report, that all Australians should feel welcome to be creative. That all Australians should feel welcome to enjoy the creative output of others without obstacles and that all Australians should be proud of the Arts in Australia as a realistic expression of who we are and what we value.
The central message that the Australia Council will be sending to the Arts community through the release of this report is that everyone has their role to play in promoting the value of the Arts to all Australians.
As you read through the report you will find some evidence of negative or indifference community responses. For example if found that thirty-five per cent of Australians agree that the Arts are OK, but their just irrelevant to me. That of course represents a challenge to those within the Arts community and to those within Government.
Encouragingly of course, the report found the great majority of Australians saw the Arts as an opportunity to express in ways that we couldn't find elsewhere what we think it is to be Australian, what the essence of Australianism is and the values that we hold as Australians. And that very strong identification between the Arts and our national identity is always something that I believe has resonated very strongly in the Australian community.
And I as a person who grew up in this country in the 1950's and now in my sixty-first year have observed the way in which the Arts over the years have come to be seen by an increasing number of Australians as a way in which we tell the world who we are, what we believe in and what we stand for.
And can I say I welcome very warmly the association with today's launch of leading identities in the Australian sporting community. I marvelled I think it was Nick [Sharadie's] comments in the Daily Telegraph this morning when he speculated that a State of Origin game might be proceeded by a Bell Shakespeare performance at one of our sporting venues. One of his I think more laconic colleagues simply remarked it as long as they had the right lines in place in the goal place there when the whistle went he didn't really mind that what went on before. Both attitudes are welcome and I think it is important to see that kind of exchange as something of a metaphor for seeing the Arts as not being something separate, special or elite but something that is very much part and parcel of our daily existence.
Now all of you in one way or another are associated with the Arts in Australia and it made an enormous contribution to the role that they play and the way in which they bulk large in community life. But I think all of us have a responsibility both in the community and within the Government to understand the barriers that many of our fellow Australians sees towards the enjoyment of the Arts. To find different ways of communicating their value to them and rather than welling inwardly our views as a community or as people in Government who are interested in the Arts as to what they mean to us and how they have developed and how they express the Australian essence and what we have to try and do is to reach out and to look in the minds and attitudes of our fellow Australians.
And this report will go a long way towards helping us to do that. And I want to thank Saatchi and Saatchi. I want to congratulate the Australia Council and to Margaret and Jennifer in particular for the leadership that they have given. And can I also take the opportunity of thanking Richard Alston who'se been my principal [inaudible] not only but principal Ministerial Adviser and Peter has joined him more recently in the time that I have been Prime Minister. The role of the Prime Minister is to try and keep abreast of all of the responsibilities of Government and all of the things that matter to the community. But you can only ever hope to do that effectively if you have in various roles a Minister who has the capacity to interpret the various challenges. From the day he was appointed, I found in Richard a very vigorous champion of the Arts, not an uncritical accepter of everything that was put to him by the community but a very vigorous interested and concerned and committed person in relation to the Arts in Australian society and that has been of enormous assistance to me and it's been a companionship over the last four and a half years in relation to the Arts that I found stimulating and I have enjoyed immensely.
So this is an important day for the Australia Council. It's an important day for the Arts. I say again it's something that does bulk very large in our priorities. I hope that in the time that we've had opportunity to do so and most recently in the budget we have demonstrated that commitment. There is a central role for government in relation to the Arts. There of course is an immensely important partnership role for the private sector and the rest of the Australian community and I hope in our way we may have got the balance right. And just as the Flying Fruit Flyer Circus taught us the value of balance in their repertoire and I'm trying to find continuous balance in explaining the various intricacies of taxation reform to the Australian community, I hope perhaps that all of us together can find the right balance between the roles of the Government, the broader community, the Arts practitioners and their commercial and private enterprise benefactors and that we can be something of a model to the rest of the world as to how you get that balance right.
I have great pleasure in launching this report. I hope it is widely read and responded to and I think it will make a great contribution to the on going cause of a wider understanding of the value of Arts and most importantly the enjoyment of the Arts by a broader cross section of the Australian community.
Thank you.