TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING MPD
ARTS POLICY LAUNCH, PLAYHOUSE VICTORIAN ARTS CENTRE,
MELBOURNE, 17 FEBRUARY 1996
E& OE PROOF COPY
Thank you indeed. One has always got to think laterally. There arb cures!!
You know, through that dreadful experience of the 1993 election -mpaign
when the Huns and Visigoths were out there before us nothing so brightened
me up or cheered me up as the support you gave me and us in 1993 and
I think you have done it again. I can't tell you how moved I was by your
reception of Annita and me and the things that Wendy ( Harmer) and
Jacki ( Weaver) and Hugo ( Weaving) have said about the Labor Party and
also about me and my colleagues. Fred Astaire once said if I had a tear
drop, I could just cry'. But, I could have done one better than Fred, I could
have cried without one.
At any rate we are all here, I think, celebrating the same thing. This is not so
much a celebration of 13 years of Labor and what it has done for the arts, but
as much a celebration of what the arts mean to everyone of us. To all of you,
who are part of the arts in this country or who support them, to me, to my
colleagues, to all of us who know just how important it is.
I think, that it was one of the things that Wendy said that, I think, I was very
happy to hear and that is that now in this country people appreciate the arts
as though they are entirely central to our life. Entirely central to our national
life, not just some thing off on a tangent on the side, but a manifestation of
the way we are. And that they are not just something the government gives
grants to or has bodies for or supports companies of, but that they are, of
their essence, central to the way we are. Because, I think, all of us feel that it
is only in a free society, it is only in a truly democratic one that has got good
values in that space and intellectual freedom does the richness bubble to the
top and we get the distilled essence of ourselves and the celebration of what
we are and what we have become.
Those words that Jefferson once used and wrote in that great American
document about human happiness life, liberty and human happiness
human happiness is the core and central objective of government. There can
be no manifestation of human happiness if our mood is crestfallen, if we are
downcast, if we are subjugated, if we are intimidated, if our creativity and our
expression is not allowed to move, we will never see the manifestation in
what we call the arts.
So, when we see a country that has vitality and vibrance in the arts we know
that we are truly making it as a society. That we have got that happiness
there and that we have got that creativity and that space that a deep
democracy does give everybody. I think that is what we are really
celebrating. We are celebrating all of that and we are celebrating the
manifestation of it in celebrating the arts.
I
My opponents say of me " you only want to give things back to the arts, you
only want to pay back the arts." I say too right I do, and I will never repay
them. I will never repay them. When I say ' I I mean it in the plural. We will
never repay them because you can't recompense, in monetary terms,
something which is central to the spirit of the nation and it is about a
celebration of the spirit and the understanding of the spiritualism of the arts is
the reason we will never repay them. We will try and we may do some things
better than others, but we will never repay them because of their essence
that richness and spirituality is something that comes from people, from
institutions, it comes from their up spiritedness, their good naturedness, it
doesn't come because of a government cheque. I am an indefatigable
warrior for the arts and I always will be. And we will resist our opponents
when they attack us.
But I think the proof of the importance of the arts is there with our Aboriginal
people who were here before all of us. For against the ravages of 40,000
years dance and music and history and religion and story telling kept them
together as a civilisation, as a community and even withstood the ravages of
the rest of us. That is where I think our lesson is and if we can do, as a
society, as they have done with that sense of belief in themselves, in
ourselves and pride in ourselves as they have then our arts in this country
will have succeeded.
I don't know of any country that has been so singularly blessed as we have.
To think that just four times our life time ago there was this large continent
inhabited by this old people who have now bequeathed us, shared this with
us, is one of the great perhaps accidents of history, one of the great
benefactions of history. We are now appreciating, I think, what a great
benefaction is as population growth and the pressures of modern life change
the way people live in the world we just the 18 million of us have inherited
this vast continent. We have got a chance to do something with it, we have
taken the great change in the post war years, the greatest risk but the
greatest reward of our time here and that was the post war migration policy
and as a consequence we now celebrate our diversity, our strength, we
rejoice in the vitality it has given us. It has made us new. This diverse
nation, this vibrant group on this continent with this old society, in this old
place, in this country we love has a chance to make us, as a nation state,
unique in the world.
Now for the first time in our history, we are living with other peoples around
us as we have never lived before. I often, when you look at the Liberals and
their subliminal messages about the good old days of the 1950s and 1960s,
the days of the monoculture, the days when all around us, when the sun
might have been shining on Australia and on Britain, maybe, and on the
United States and on Canada but there wasn't much sun shining on Burma or
on Indonesia or on Indochina, on Vietnam or on China itself. I mean these
were dark days with the Burmese in their utter subjugation. The Indonesians
and their desperate poverty. The Vietnamese fighting back the yoke of
colonialism and the Chinese trying to organise themselves into a nation with
some bounty. Now we look around us and we find their freedom emerging,
their income growth rising, their pride in themselves, the celebration of their
cultures and their invitation to us to join them. For the first time in our life
time, the sun is really shining brightly on the whole world, not just on a couple
of places. That is what is on offer to us. To be part of that because what is
happening around us in east Asia is a phenomenon without precedence in
human history.
I said the other day at the Policy Launch, you just might recall that the
industrial revolution created so much wealth in Britain the British built abbeys
to themselves across the English countryside and it came from somewhere
between 10 and 20 million people. In the United States when the Fricks and
the Carnegies and the Rockefellers put their fortunes together and built the
great businesses of America and the railroads opened up the country and the
mines created the wealth and the mansions were built all along Fifth Avenue
and in Baltimore and in Pennsylvania, right through the United States, it was
done of a population of somewhere between 40 and 70 million. Just imagine
what is going to happen with 2.5 billion people, with economies growing at
8 and 10 per cent a year. The revolution, the production of wealth, the flux
that is going to come from that will have no precedence in human history.
The emergence of China into the world economy all 1.2 billion of them
knows no historic precedence and we are right in the middle of it. Right in
the centre and we have got a gilt edged invitation to come to the party, to be
part of the life of this.
But, imagine going there without a strategy. Imagine going there without a
sense of yourself. Imagine having the great inheritance of this continent and
this people and going there uncertainly. Going there almost as though you
shouldn't be there. That is why it is entirely central, it is fundamental to our
future both economically, socially, culturally that we know who we are and
that we celebrate who we are and we express ourselves and why it is
important that we define ourselves and why the arts do these things for us.
Why it is important to have an Australian as our head of state, because we
can't go as some derivative society with the head of state the monarch of
another country and present ourselves as a unique people.
Yet, the Liberal Party says that the republic is a distraction. They say that
I use it only to get away from the big issues. But when I say hang on we said
we would produce 500,000 jobs and we have produced 713, 000. We said
we would make the economy again, we have grown faster than any other
western world economy, we have done it with three per cent inflation. What
do you think I am distracting from?
The other day when I said we would put a plebiscite to the Australian people
to ask them the question: do they want an Australian as the Australian head
of state? John Howard, quick as a flash, came out and said it was cheap
populism. To ask each Australian what their opinion is he says is cheap, but
to have 300 people boxed up in a room appointed by him in some convention
is democratic. So, they attacked the notion that we should know who we are
and that we could only proceed if we are completely certain of our identity
and our strength and that we celebrate ourselves and that we take something
to this great change in the world and that we are part of it.
The arts is not just something for our quiet enjoyment. It is not just something
that governments do because it is the right thing to do. It is entirely
meaningful about the sort of country we are, the kind of democracy we have,
why we should invest in our creativity because without it, we will wander
around as waifs in a world of opportunity when it is really ours to claim.
We are now back, again, talking about these things. We are talking about
the importance of these things. The importance of the arts, its importance to
the country and what the Government has done for them.
I know three years ago that people thought that the arts were gravely
threatened. We had Fightback, we had John Hewson. They thought in the
deprivation of the economy, with a recession and high unemployment we
were dead meat and so instead of being subtle, they were unsubtle. They
said how about this, a Goods and Services Tax, we will rip up Medicare, we
will cut $ 10 billion out of the social wage, we will knock around the ABC, we
will gut the arts, what do you reckon about that? People gave them the
answer at the end. A lot of artists, I think, thought the game is really up for
grabs here. We are going to have to tuck in and defend the things we
believe in. But, in some respects, there was a boyish naivety shall we say
about John Hewson. You know, rushing in there with a document seeking a
mandate, in many respects quite an honourable thing to do. Seeking support
for the model he believed in.
But, in some respects, this election is far more dangerous for the people who
have belief in this country, who have faith in it. Because now you have a
campaign organised by cynics. You know, the warped intellect of Staley, that
absolute canister of cynicism in Robb their Federal Secretary and a Federal
Leader in John Howard who just wants to be himself and they won't let him.
He said ' look, I want to do the things I I want to cut wages.' No, no you
can't, no, no, John you can't do that. ' But that Medicare, I want to rip it up'.
And they say ' no, not yet John, not yet, not yet.' He went out there and they
put him in the forest and he said ' I thought we got rid of all of these'. They
have made him into another person and he is unhappy about it. He is waiting
to break out. He is waiting to break out. But when he does, all of their
cynicism about Australia, their belief in other places really, the fact that they
don't have much faith in us they have always seen us as some sort of
derivative place that they can get a quid from, make a buck from, live the
comfortable life from, perched in some good suburb, or on some harbour
foreshore and taking the occasional trips back to the places that they really
have their commitments to.
This is the sort of thing they will try and do and yet we say, look, for years we
have been saying these things: universal health is good, trees are good,
wages are good, the Arbitration Commission is good, the arts are good and
they don't believe us. They don't believe us.
And here he is like Indiana Jones in some exotic place, in places he has
never trod Medicare, industrial relations, forests, the environment
discovering it all for the first time and we are supposed to be grateful, say, we
have humanised them, we are grateful.
I am sure when I came on here today I thought this was the set from
' Future Directions', you remember that thing which was published. But that is
them, isn't it? I mean that is them. In a sense, they define the rest of us by
being around. We don't mind them being around, we only mind them being in
charge. I mean Peter Costello said this when we launched the first ever Cultural
Policy for the country in Creative Nation he said, ' It has got to be' I mean
he is such a berk isn't he ' It has got to be a contradiction in terms, hasn't it?
I mean a Government arts policy. It has got to be a bit of a joke, doesn't it, to
run around and say at a time when everybody says you should be reducing
your expenditure. Here is another $ 250 million, some of it for people who are
quite wealthy or getting these artist grants.'
You see it is so perceptive, isn't it? It is so perceptive. And then, of course,
Mr Downer our little curly headed mate he said when he was the Leader,
when he was a Shadow Arts Minister, ' That a Coalition Government would
have the power to veto Australia Council grants'. Well there we are, cop that
one. And the Council be reduced to an advisory body, advising people like
Alexander Downer and Peter Costello and Tim Fischer and John Howard.
And Howard, back in the 1980s, when he was actually leading the Liberal
Party on that occasion, he then announced plans to abolish the Department
of the Arts, Heritage and the Environment and with it the Australian Film
Commission. I mean they are such a sweet little group, aren't they?
But now he is a convert. He says he is going to agree. He has ticked
Creative Nation, $ 250 million, he will have that. He said he is going to kick in
more money $ 21 million of it actually from that funded by the Government's
Budget last year and these sorts of things.
Well we really know about them and I suppose reciting their form gives us a
bit of fun, but not much joy. But let's recite some of the things, I think, we
have done and tried to do with you and for you.
We have put the Arts into Cabinet and Michael Lee, our Minister, is with us
today. We have also joined it up with the Department of Communications.
So it is Arts and Communications because we know how central this matter is
communications, the growth of communications and how it can never be
untwined from the arts.
We have bolstered the Australia Council and we have extended its brief to
Hillary Macphee and Michael Lynch who are bravely turning it into the
responsive and innovative organisation it should be and, I think, they are
doing well.
We have set up a whole new set of important cultural institutions the
National Academy of Music, the Foundation for Culture and Humanities here
in Melbourne, and there is a lot of money around in this country now a lot of
bread. You can see with that change we are going to make to the tax system
on trusts. I mean how mean-spirited they are, some of these characters.
If they just gave any of that sort of money to the Foundation for Culture and
Humanities, the arts would get a gigantic kick along.
The National Indigenous Performing Arts Academy in Brisbane, the Gallery of
Aboriginal Australia in Canberra, the National Museum of Australia, the
Production Fund in Melbourne for the mini-series and the telemovies, and we
have got some other things to say and I would just like to mention a few of
those. We are setting up an Independent Music Development Corporation to
encourage independent production of contemporary music and develop a
touring circuit for bands. Now we should do this.
We are investing another $ 12.8 million in new regional cultural facilities, or in
the refurbishment of existing buildings and we will establish a series of
fellowships for outstanding regional arts groups, or companies, and provide
funding to promote regional artists and bring them into the national audience.
We will extend copyright protection for artists working to life, plus 70 years.
So it is life, plus 70 years. We will set up an Australian Copyright Office and
implement arrangements for performers copyright and indigenous copyright.
And here in Melbourne beyond the changes we have made already with the
Production Fund and the National Academy of Music on the site of
Essendon Airport, we will establish a National Film and Multimedia Centre, a
world-class precinct comprising film, television and multimedia development
studios; contemporary music video production facilities; operating officers for
local and international writers and publisher, creators and producers; and
laboratories and support facilities.
Now this is a mighty site that has been reserved to us by just the
development of airports in this city. It is about 340 hectares and it is
kilometres from the city and it offers a great opportunity and I am very
pleased to announce today that Mr Jack Smorgon has agreed to Chair the
new Essendon Centre Development Authority which will oversee the
development. We are giving $ 4 million to establish a Youth Programming Unit in the ABC in
Melbourne. We will provide another $ 1.6 million through the Australia
Council to establish a National Theatre of Cultural Diversity in Melbourne.
And we are going to build a home for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in
Hobart.
And as we have been one of the prime movers in establishing APEC, which is
now the primary piece of political architecture in the Asia-Pacific, we are
going to invite the 17 other members of APEC to participate in an inaugural
festival of the Asia-Pacific in Brisbane in 1997.
I think these things will tend to round out what we have been doing, what we
have been able to accomplish, and we will of course be, as implied they are
not only maintaining our financial commitments to the arts in general, but
improving them.
But I am very pleased about those initiatives and especially with the last one,
inviting the APEC countries to come here because that gets back to the point
we have got a gilt edged invitation and we will be, I think, carried along by
the excitement and the growth of this region. And the opportunities we will
have to enjoy their culture and they ours because we have got so much to
give and we want to show people what we have got to give and as we have
been pretty much the architects of this, we can be the architects of an
international cultural festival of this kind and, I think, this is going to be
important to us.
Could I just say that, you know, the dear old French we have been fighting
them for years over various things. But we do some good things with them
too. They have been letting off nuclear weapons in the Pacific for years and
we set up the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty and they are now
going to sign it.
We have been arguing with them about agriculture in Europe, in the
Uruguay Round, for years and we basically had a victory over them there.
But they are capable of some very good things as we all know. In fact, some
of us rather like them. And a couple have come to my mind. One is, that
when Michel Rocard first became Prime Minister, it was really a funny day.
Don Russell and I Don is with me today, you can't miss him when he comes
into a crowd Don and I were in Paris and we had this appointment to see
Michel Rocard. He had been Prime Minister for six weeks, no Australian
Minister had met a French Premier for, I think, ten or twelve years to this
point.
And I said to Don, we have got an hour and a half and we may as well knock
over the shops around the Rue de Bac and those places. And I dragged Don
in and out of all these places and I said we have got a quarter of an hour to
get there, we had better go.
We got in the car and we are heading for the Hotel Matignon and down the
street, I can't recall its name now, the Rue de Lauren I think it is, there was a
traffic jam and the time was passing, and the appointed time had arrived and
I said, we are going to have to hot-foot-it. So out of the car we got, down the
street we got, and we walked in the gate of the Hotel Matignon and the guard
said, ' No, no, you can't pass. Who are you?' I said, well I am the Australian
Finance Minister and this is my Adviser and after some trouble we got past
them to a waiting Michel Rocard at the door and we sat down and we talked
about the Matignon Accords in French Polynesia and then he said to me,
' You know, the President and I want to do something for the bicentenary of
the Revolution next year.' And he said, ' We thought about setting up an
environmental protection agency, an international one.' And I said, well that
is a noble idea, Michel, but you and I will be very old people before that ever
happens. And he said, ' Well you are a fraternal party, what about thinking of something
we can do together'. And I said, well I have got an idea for you, but I am in a
minority of two in my Cabinet and that is to turn Antarctica into a wilderness
park. And five days later they, the French, were to sign after ten years of
negotiation, the Minerals Convention in Antarctica, which would have seen all
the big powers ripping it apart, mining for oil, looking for minerals, and we
stopped them and we signed it as it turned out and we put Antarctica away for
years until we understand more about it. That is one good thing we did
with them.
The other good thing is at the end of this acrimonious Uruguay Round when
our friends, the Americans, put the weights on us from Hollywood, we joined
with the French in refusing the Americans their wish on audio visual. And
having, sort of, thrown off the colonial culture that pervaded so much of the
arts in Australia for so much of our history, having succeeded in that, we were
not to have then laid upon us the culture of the United States, or worse
simply caught up in the global homogenisation of culture. And that is a threat
to us, it is a real threat to us. But you won't meet the threat by shying away
from it, you will only join it by meeting it.
And really, I suppose, in many respects, this is what we are doing. We know
it is coming. But with all of these countries around us, in APEC, in the
Pacific, in Asia, they want their cultures too and we have got in APEC half the
world's population, over half the world's population and 60 per cent of the
world's GDP. And that means we can, basically, keep our cultural freedom if
we are good at it, if we are quick enough. And if we are committed enough to
the things we believe our culture, about the unique quality of it, about its
peculiarly Australian characteristics and how important that is to us as a
country. So many of these institutions that I am speaking of today and the ones we
have created and the ones we are using well already, and whether it is a
celebration of our pigs, or our dance, or whatever it might be, it is ours and
we are out there and we are going to keep it. It is important that we put,
indelibly, our own stamp on the arts and that they are ours and when people
see them they know they represent this unique nation, this country
Australia. Now I have talked for too long, but I want to finish on these points. Never has
there been a time when it has been more important to have belief in
ourselves, to have faith in who we are and what we have created here. And
to be contemplating now, looking back, or trying to embrace a group that do
not want to celebrate it, don't quite understand what it is, and for the
opportunity of the greatest economic phenomenon in history, to say as they
are saying now they don't want to be in it. They really say, we are obsessed
with Asia. ' The Government is obsessive', says Downer about Asia.
They are saying, they want to make relationships stronger with our Western
allies, meaning they really want the drive down Whitehall again and they
want the limo on Pennsylvania Avenue. And we have all done that and that
has its particular joys for the moment. In fact, when Hawkey went around to
see Reagan in a big black limo, I told him it would have been easier to go in a
Yellow Cab and he said, ' That is the thing about you, you have got no
understanding of protocol.'
But, at any rate, this is where our conservative colleagues want to be and we
like these countries, we have cultural affinities with them, we will always keep
them. But our future is here, our future is in this part of the world, and our
heritage is this great old place, and we will only really succeed if we celebrate
it in a way which reflects upon the creativity and the democracy and the
intellectual freedom we have created here and take it and transport it into the
countries around us where it will be received with great joy.
This is really the role of the arts in this country, the defining role and this is
what we are really here celebrating today. Not just 13 years of support by the
Labor Party, but the fact that the Labor Party understands this and that you
understand it and that, together, we are all part of it. Thank you for today.
ends