3'
PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MP
OPENING OF THE ABC SOUTHBANK CENTRE, MELBOURNE
NOVEMBER 1994
E& EO PROOF COPY
Thank you indeed Mark, Mrs Armstrong, David Hill, Haddon Storey and Mrs
Storey, my ministerial colleague Michael Lee, Senator Alston, the City
Commissioner, distinguished members of the ABC board, the Melbourne
Symphony Orchestra and ladies and gentlemen.
It is a great pleasure to be here at this, the opening ceremony of the Southbank
complex because for too many years the ABC has lived in rabbit warrens in
Sydney and Melbourne Melbourne the same as Sydney and I was delighted, in
the years I was Treasurer, to try and assist the ABC into a major focus facility in
Sydney and we have been able to do it as well here in Melbourne, and I
congratulate the board and the Managing Director for seeing these great
developments come about. It is, as the Chairman said, a delight that it is in
Southbank, and Southbank is a delightful area. It is an area Melbourne has
always had the view. there has always been the view that Melbourne has had
the lungs of the great parks around the city, and it has. But I think Southbank
proves another point, and that is the breadth and the breathing has got to be in
the built environment too, and we see it in the great cities of the world like Paris.
and we have seen it in cities that have seen their best and may be coming again
cities like Berlin, where the built environment matters, and Southbank has
shown this to Melbourne. And there is, I think, now somewhat of a celebration
about it, and I was also pleased to be involved if only in a small way -with a
number of Premiers who have been developing this John Cain and Joan
Kirner who is with us today and now the current Government of Victoria.
This is a great development for Melbourne, and I felt the other night when the
Festival was on the opening of the Festival at the Canadian Opera, where I
might say that the MSO sounded tremendous strength was coming from them.
Afterwards we went down to the Riverside, and there was a real celebration
there. And there was even a clap for the Melbourne Casino they even got
their hands together as the candles lit up, everybody put their hands together, so
there was a great feeling of joy about the place. And why shouldn't there be?
The fact is, to have the ABC here right in the centre of all this is, as Mark
said, we're going to see Southbank become the area a focused area for
television production and multi-media as well. Indeed, a real milieu of arts and
culture, and it's entirely significant that the ABC should be here as Australia's
pre-eminent cultural organisation, because the ABC is undoubtably and
absolutely Australia's pre-eminent cultural organisation, an essential part of the
cultural fabric of this country. There is a word that is being thrown around at the
moment called convergence. You now, in this day and age of acronyms and
words, every couple of years there is a new big one that floats around the
current new big one is convergence. It means many things, but I think in this
context it means the convergence of what the ABC has to offer, and what
Melbourne has to offer. Because I think there is a real convergence here, and
we saw it the Festival which was directed very competently by Leo Schofield in
the last few weeks we saw it in that flood of energy, and we have seen it over
the years with the fact that Melbourne is a great city a city of ideas, of art of
music, of football, of sport and the convergence of these two gives us a
chance if Creative Nation means anything, we'll certainly see a lot of creativity
here at Southbank with the ABC.
In the Creative Nation statement I had the pleasure of launching just a few
weeks ago, it was my very great pleasure to see and to announce that the
Commonwealth would establish a national music academy here in Melbourne,
that Melbourne would be the home of the $ 60 million television production fund,
and also the home of the Australian Cultural Foundation and six multi-media
centres. And I am hoping that, along with all things else which Melbourne has in
terms of art and cultural sophistication, that these things will add new dimensions
to Melbourne, and see it emerge as in South-East Asia as one of the places
where art and culture and particularly Australian culture can emerge. There
is a great chance for Australia in the information technology, and in art and
culture, because we have always had whether it be in literature or in music or
in film and television and last night we were celebrating our film awards the
capacity to really add something to the technological availability of educational
and entertainment materials. Entertainment has been an industry which has
largely been locked up with the United States I think we now have the chance
to challenge that, and we can challenge it in the market to which we are closest
and which shares the same time zone as us. And that must give us enormous
opportunities to be up there, because many other cultures.. . the information
tech , nology culture has, and it will not be exclusively an English-speaking
culture, but there is a very large component from the English-speaking countries
there. And I think there is a real cultural impediment certainly at this point of its
development of some countries which have mastered very great technological
advances, such as Japan, running into something of an impediment in dealing
with information technology. But there is no such impediment on Australia.
So that's why I think it is important to get our culture and our technology
together, and I suppose as Mark and David said earlier, eloquently, this building
is going to be a mix of the two fifty studios, eight of them entirely digitalised
being the home of all this creative capacity. It's the very essence if we have to
find it in a building of what this jump into multi-media means, here at
Southbank. But I think this capacity to project ourselves into this world is very
great indeed, but that's why I say " you can't do this unless you're confident about
yourself". You can't be out there as some sort of derivative culture saying " oh, is
there a place in here for You have got to go out there and bang the doors
in, and you can only ever do that when you are entirely confident about where
you are and what you have become. And that is why I have always thought the
republic means so much to us not simply so much for the constitutional
change, but for the sense that it brings. You can't go around the world saying
" here we are, here's our culture, here's what we can add, but by the way, we're
borrowing the monarch of another country while we're at it." Now, we all know
that act is over, it's just a matter of when it runs out. And I always say to my
Tory friends, " come on board, better late than never there's always a place for
you"-. Anyway, what we are talking about is energy it's the energy of the city, of
Melbourne here, it's the energy of the ABC, it's the energy of the creative people.
If multi-media, the transmission of our values, the transmission of our thought, of
our culture is about anything, it is about energy. And we are seeing a real stir in
the energy of this country someone has put a big acupuncture needle into
Melbourne and Sydney, and in Perth and Adelaide, and the energy is well and
truly flowing. And so what we have to do then is sort of direct it around the world
so we can enjoy it and so can others. The ABC, of course, has been a bearer of
culture and tradition for this country for as long as any of us can remember, and
not just that, a trailblazer it's not just the bearer, it's also a trailblazer. And its
charter has been to focus on Australian culture, and I think this charter is going
to be more important as the years go on as we see homogenised
entertainment around the world, as Hollywood tries to extend its hegemony over
the world information highway. As we -start to see the capacity for major
broadcasting companies to actually have that sort of impact, standing by one's
culture is going to be, and promoting one's culture and developing one's culture
is going to be exceptionally important to this country. Not just for what we can
do abroad, but most particularly, what we do at home. So the charter values of
the ABC its charter role in news, current affairs, sport, drama, ideas,
information all the things it does, and does well, we will need it to do even
more of* as the, if you like, the international assault comes, and come it will with
pay television, and with satellites and with the computer linkages through the
information highway.
So let's think that in developing this building at Southbank, we are getting ready.
We are getting ready to be able to project our culture and to develop it in the
context of this great international change which is with us. The ABC, of course,
has responded to this challenge not just now, but has in these years and in a
number of ways with Australian Television International as a case in point,
which is an entirely valuable projection of our values and our culture. And I am
often told, when I go to Indonesia for instance, that the Indonesian cabinet
many members of it watch ATVI news of an evening, and if you are really
lucky, if you get the time right, you can even watch Question Time it comes
through, and then you appreciate that part of the Standing Orders which takes
the interjections out and all the rest. But it's there. And that healthy, robust
celebration of our democracy we have on our news services and in our
Parliament, is out there and the values are being transmitted. And I think that's
a tremendous thing.
And the same with pay television the Government, with the Board and the
Managing Director, have seen a role for the ABC in pay television. It's going to
be tricky getting it right, as it is for anybody in this business. Whether it's going
to be satellite delivered or terrestrially delivered, the fact is the Government
believes that the ABC if we're going to have pay television transmission into
homes then the ABC should be there. It will be up to the ABC as to who it
packages its product with, how it does it and where it gets the value. But the fact
is it has got two channels there, and of course, in the end as many channels as it
likes as the fibre-optic cable is rolled out, and as much as it can sell in programs
and packages. But it should be there, and it can be there, and I think it is
important that it is there.
We have also seen remarkable changes with radio. I think it has been a great
job done with radio across the continent great variety, great quality. In the last
year we have seen five major international awards to ABC radio, fifteen major
Australian awards and in the last five years, we have seen an increase in the
audience reached from 25% to 40% of the population. That is a tremendous
change that is a revolution in communications really for a medium which has
been around a very long time. And all of the networks lead in Australian content.
Of course with that, Radio Australia is now, still at this point, broadcasting to
about 50 million listeners, and JJJ that ground-breaking network for young
Australians is now being extended to rural Australia. So there has been a
tremendous change in radio, and we all appreciate the quality of ABC radio
because I think almost one-third to half the country listen to it every week. So
this -isa nother thing.
But the ABC has its history also in what it does in drama and in music, and let
me say a couple of things about the orchestras, given that we have made them
the subject of some discussion in the Cultural Statement, and the MSO is with us
today. I have always doubted whether Australia could actually with 18 million
people build an orchestra of the standard of the Berlin Philharmonic or the
Vienna or others, but it has always been my great ambition that we could. And
given the fact that because the ABC started the city orchestras as radio
orchestras, we have over a period of time, been able to give our cities very high
standard orchestras, and that has been a great thing for Australia. We are a
tremendously urbanised country, with two very large concentrations in Sydney
and Melbourne, and the SSO and the MSO have sought to service those
communities with their orchestras. So the Government has had two approaches
to this: one, that we try and establish a national music school that can actually
feed an orchestra by the people who operate and teach in it, and by its product,
and maybe build one organically continue to build an orchestra organically or
another approach, which is essentially to try and encourage the individual
development of an orchestra by getting the cheque book out and trying to
develop it and to buy in the skills we need to make it into that international
standard. We have chosen that route for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and
that option is available for the MSO. My advice to the MSO is to say to Aunty
" thank you Aunty, we love you, but we are leaving you but please leave us
room to come home occasionally". But that is a matter for you, and you can
make your mind up about that.
One of the things we are seeing from this lI'm delighted that the ABC has said
that the MSO will be its flagship orchestra that has already encouraged the
Victorian Government to donate $ 600,000 a year towards it, to expand its string
section and make it stronger. Well today, I would like to top that up to $ 1 million
so at least the orchestra can expand its string section, and we can see what the
ABC is prepared to do with it. I will be very interested to see, we have always
had some competition between the SSO and the MSO, and what a good thing
competition always is, and we are going to see more of it, and the nation will be
the winners from that and not just here, but abroad as well, so good luck to you.
Could I just say a couple of things about the Managing Director, because he has
been in the news these days? I say this David, after 8 1/ 2 years you have got
the right to leave anywhere. When I walked into my Chairman after 8 1/ 2 years
as Treasurer and told him I was leaving, he wasn't particularly pleased, but I still
left. Admittedly I came back a bit later to do something else. An old friend of
mine, Jack Lang I'm always getting Jack Lang quoted back to me by my
opponents said to me " The only reason they will ever take you Paul" he said,
" is if they really want you". Well, you can make those sort of comebacks in
public life I'm not sure if you can leave as Managing Director of the ABC and
then make a comeback probably that is a bit of a tall order. But, 8 1/ 2 years is
a very long time, and for an institution.. . and David has certainly knocked a lot of
the rough edges off the ABC, and all the developments I have spoken of this
building, the building in Sydney, and they are not just buildings they are
actually the bringing together of hubs of creativity the shift into Asia, the growth
in radio, the changes in the management of the ABC are very great changes
indeed, and they should be logged in the national consciousness as we see the
ABC move through these various eras of change, at the pace of change today
with multi-media coming the way it is, with pay television coming the way it is,
getting ready for that, and working it out and let me tell you this, nobody quite
knows where all these technologies are going, and trying to keep a foot on all of
them is one of the things which the ABC has done under David's leadership, and
I think this is something well done on its behalf. I did see today across the
headlines in The Australian: " Hill forced out says Downer". Now I thought he
was referring to Robert Hill. Now I know it is a teensy-weensy bit horrid of me to
say that, but the fact is moderates I don't know what price they have on the
scalp of moderates in the Liberal Party, but it is very high. At any rate, it
wasn't it turned out you had to read down the story to see he was talking about
you David, and that's is why I thought I would say that whenever you go and I
think you have said you were going in June after 8 1/ 2 years, it is one hell of
an innings, and good on you.
So perhaps let me conclude where I began and say it is more than a pleasure to
be here. To see these complexes put together, and to know it is such a
tremendously strong underpinning of the ABC, and to know what the ABC has
meant to Australia down throughout the decades, and to know now as we see
the threat of homogenisation heading towards us, just how centrally important
this unique cultural institution is. To be here, at Southbank, in this year, when
these changes are right upon us, there's a sense of poignancy about it which I
think we all feel and understand. Annita and I are delighted to be here today,
and it is with very great pleasure indeed that I declare the Southbank Complex
open. Thank you.
ends.