Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a representative from Western Australia, a place famous for its natural environmental riches, its beautiful beaches and rivers, tall tree forests and woodlands, gorges and desert landscapes, I am always keen to remind people that WA is also a place rich in distinctive arts and cultural activity. This is a good time to make that point, because February is the month when culture and the arts in Western Australia reaches a peak, with the Fringe World Festival and the Perth International Arts Festival delivering local, national and international acts and events. Indeed, this weekend Perth CBD and foreshore will be a city-sized stage for the Giants—a quite extraordinary public performance and art phenomenon involving massive, exquisite puppets and a small army as their entourage. While in Fremantle, we have already enjoyed a range of Fringe Art Festival events under the banner of Freo Royale, which commenced last Wednesday.

I know there are many on this side of the House who are proud that under the Labor government that the then Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean, launched the first national arts and cultural policy in almost two decades—a policy reinforced with $235 million in new funding. I am glad that the policy had as it first imperative to recognise, respect and celebrate the centrality of Aboriginal and Torres Islander cultures. The policy took as its premise the idea that government, the private sector and the wider community should invest and be involved in the arts because there are such enormous social, cultural and economic dividends to be had from doing so.

Speaking of investing in the arts, I am conscious that the National Opera Review is currently occurring through the expert stewardship of Dr Helen Nugent. I hope this process will provide government with all the advice and options it needs to grapple with some problems that we already recognise. While there will inevitably be consideration of the 'how', I cannot imagine that there will be much dispute about the 'what' in terms of the need for higher and more secure base funding and also in terms of better indexation of funding between review periods.

Opera and orchestras represent the zenith of organised, sophisticated, highest quality performing arts and musicianship—much as some might argue submarines represent the zenith of complex, coordinated manufacturing endeavour. That is not to make a relative music arts judgement about orchestras as opposed to, say, Paul Kelly, the Hilltop Hoods or a jazz quartet but simply to acknowledge that the scale and aggregated musical expertise of an orchestra is in a category of its own.

I am a proud supporter of the Fremantle Chamber Orchestra because I believe the continued existence of orchestras is structurally necessary in order to support the encouragement and development of all musicians to the highest standard, and so their continued good health is an essential part of a broad framework that produces talented musical performers of every kind—the vast majority of whom will not ultimately practice their skill or follow their interest in either of these formats but might become a music teacher or be taught by that teacher, and so it goes. Like building submarines or having a space program, the support for human endeavour at its most complex and finely tuned flows out into the entire field of that endeavour. I am concerned that if there is not a better system put in place for secure and properly reviewed and indexed funding, operas and orchestras will continue to exist in a state of relative fragility. They will become less active and more risk averse. They will be less attractive to the most talented and ambitious musicians—in short, they will be in a dangerous spiral.

In the broader context of culture and the arts, I love the Albert Einstein quote 'The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant'. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. We cannot allow that to be the case. We must hold onto truth that a creative society is necessarily a more innovative and productive society. It is no accident, in my view, that while there are many artists, writers and musicians living in Fremantle there are also many inventors.

There are some 531,000 people working the creative industries in Australia—more than half a million people; almost five per cent of the workforce—and the sector's growth is almost that of the workforce as a whole. Creativity and innovation are what will power our state and our nation's future, so we need to tap into the passion and imagination that young people have innately and nurture it in our homes, in our schools, in our businesses and of course in the arts. That is why it is incredibly important that both government and the wider society at all levels invest in the arts—because there are enormous, cultural and economic dividends in doing so.

In the end, it is culture that defines us. We are home to the oldest living culture on earth and we have welcomed a great diversity of cultures to share this land. When giants walk the earth in Western Australia this weekend in a performance that I have no doubt will provoke wonder, excitement and even a kind of sublime bewilderment for an audience that may reach one million people, it will be an opportunity to reflect on Western Australia's role as a home and host to high-quality culture and the arts.