Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian National Academy of Music is located in Bank Street, South Melbourne, in my electorate. It is part of the arts precinct in Southbank and South Melbourne that employs many people and brings such cultural vitality to the area I represent. Many of its staff and some of its students are my constituents. I respect the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. I know he has had a difficult job grappling with the future of the Australian National Academy of Music, but I make no secret of the fact that I regret the minister’s decision to end funding for the academy as of the end of this year. I have discussed this issue with the minister and with the director of the academy. It is still my view that it is in the interests of the academy’s students and in the interests of the future of classical music performance in Australia for the academy to remain in existence and in its present premises. Achieving that objective is my aim.

The current proposal is that the academy’s functions be transferred to a new body, the Australian Institute of Music Performance, located at the University of Melbourne. There are no physical premises ready at the university to receive the academy’s students at the start of 2009. I understand that the university intends building a new performance facility at the conservatorium, but that will certainly not be ready next year, so the academy’s current students will at best have to be in makeshift premises next year, to the detriment of their training. The minister has said that transitional arrangements will be made for ANAM students in 2009. I am sure he means this, but I still think that there is a risk that students who have already been accepted by the academy for 2009 and have planned their lives around that assumption may find themselves with no place to perform. Some have indicated that they will go overseas. This would be a tragedy for Australia.

The second issue is that the function of a university is to grant degrees and to educate students to the level required to gain a degree. The Australian National Academy of Music is not an educational institution in that sense. Many of its students are already graduates in music. Its function is not to grant degrees; it is to train elite musical performers and to bring them to a level at which they can perform with the best musicians in the world. Moving them to Melbourne university, an institution with different objectives, and placing them in an undergraduate environment, with all its competing pressures and distractions, will also be to their detriment. The minister has said that ANAM students will be able to undertake non-degree based performance training at the university. That may be the intention, but I am not persuaded that this will be an adequate substitute for the training they are currently getting at the dedicated facilities at the academy in South Melbourne.

Since the minister announced his decision, I have seen the academy’s development strategy of December 2006 and the report on the academy’s future by Jonathan Mills. Both these reports recommended that the academy be retained as an independent institution and that its funding be increased to enable it to meet its responsibilities more effectively. Mr Mills recommended that the academy’s funding be increased from its current $2.5 million a year to about $6.5 million or $7 million. I note that we spend $15 million a year training elite sports men and women at the Australian Institute of Sport. Achieving excellence in the arts is every bit as important—and many would say it is more important—as achieving excellence in sport.

I hope the minister will take note of the concerns expressed by the students and staff of the academy and of the respected members of the arts community—concerns that I, as the academy’s local member, have given voice to tonight—and reconsider his decision. I stand ready to work with the minister for the benefit of the ANAM staff and, most importantly, its current and prospective students. We cannot say to our greatest future classical music talent: you were once elite and now you are on the street.