Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors, Tourism and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This evening it is my melancholy duty to talk about the rushed and bungled way in which the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, has completely mishandled the closure of the Australian National Academy of Music. I rise tonight because of the coalition’s absolute commitment to making sure that institutions of excellence, such as the Australian National Academy of Music, remain open as elite training institutions for some of Australia’s best and brightest. The coalition remains steadfastly by those students and staff who choose to study at the Australian National Academy of Music because we fundamentally believe that these kinds of elite institutions have a place in Australian society not only to ensure that we showcase the best and brightest of Australian students to the world but also to ensure that young Aussie kids have access to the very best that musical performance, when it comes to classical performance, can provide.

It is not a view that is held purely on this side of the House, because I know there are members on the other side of the chamber, members of the government, who have broken ranks with the minister on this very poor decision to close the National Academy of Music. It is not only the coalition that is worked up about this decision but also some 10,791 signatories on a petition and some 3,507 members of the ANAM Facebook support group. There are 55 students, a number of staff and more than 60 students due to enrol next year who have all been thrown onto the scrap heap by this bungled decision by a minister who simply does not care about the consequences of his actions.

The question that needs to be asked is why has the minister taken the decision to axe ANAM? Let us revisit very briefly what has transpired. Let us revisit the way in which the students who have studied at ANAM this year and were due to be enrolled next year have been thrown onto the scrap heap by a government that is insensitive to their needs and unwilling to listen to the very clear demands not only of the student body but also of the entire classical music performance set in Australia. The story is not compelling when it comes to supporting the minister’s case, because we have a minister who has taken the decision to close one of Australia’s best institutions without regard for the consequences. More importantly, we have a minister who is yet to set foot in this chamber and explain the rationale for his decision and, in the same way, to rub salt in the wound, a minister who has not even set foot in the halls of the Australian National Academy of Music.

These questions need to be answered by this minister and I urge him to come into the House and address these questions. What conversation, if any, has taken place between the minister’s office and the Prime Minister’s office? The decision to transfer the Australian National Academy of Music to the University of Melbourne is somehow strangely linked, we suspect, to the very close friendship between the Prime Minister and the University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor, Glyn Davis. We know they co-chaired the 2020 Summit and I have been asking for weeks for the minister to make this relationship clear and to explain whether or not the Prime Minister personally intervened in this decision. This is the chamber in which to answer that question. It is time that not only the opposition but also those nearly 11,000 people who have signed the petition got an answer to those questions, because people are upset by this government’s decision.

In addition to that, when we look at the rationale and the very haphazard way in which the minister has approached this decision which, in my view, was not made in good faith, you would have to question the rationale for the closure. The coalition remains committed to ANAM. We know that the current artistic director at ANAM, Brett Dean, won the 2009 Grawemeyer award for his violin concerto. We know that there is a series of excellence. Mr Speaker, you do not have to take my word for it. In a media release released only days ago, the minister said:

In discussion with the University of Melbourne and having heard the concerns of students of the Academy I am also pleased to announce today that the new performance and training centre will retain the name Australian National Academy of Music, with all of its connotations of excellence.

The question is: why has the minister done this? What relationship exists between the Prime Minister, the minister and the University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor, Glyn Davis? Why will the minister not come clean? And why will those on the government benches, like the member for Melbourne Ports and other members who are in the chamber this evening, not stand up for what they know is the right decision? (Time expired)