MINISTER FOR THE ARTS, TONY BURKE: Thanks so much Larissa, incredibly kind. Can I start by thanking Selina Walker, I know Selina had to go. But I am still always blown away when you think of the history, you think of all the things that can be said, the word we keep hearing is ‘welcome’. There's an extraordinary generosity in that and over time as a nation we can only hope, and writers will be a big part of making sure that we lead the way to the rest of the nation showing that same level of generosity in return.

I want to in particular acknowledge Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. Sarah has been there for the whole journey in the fight for cultural policy and been at the launches but also been in every committee, in every speech, she has been a fearless advocate for the arts, and I want to acknowledge that. I should also just say, Alex, thank you so much for the joy with which you are doing this tonight. My first one of these awards was in 2013 when I was a brand new Arts Minister. Award after award I gave and then the thank you speeches were different people smashing the government and me personally. I always arrive with trepidation but to arrive with a bit of fun, thank you, I really appreciate it.

We're in one of the great collecting institutions of Australia, that I'm responsible for as Minister, here at the National Library. Larissa, I want to acknowledge your role as the Chair here and acknowledge Clare Wright who's also up for some of her writing tonight but also as the Chair of the National Museum. I am glad that we have a writer chairing the library, and a historian chairing the museum. It’s a long time before we’ve had those things, and I’m really proud of it.

Not long ago, I read about another one of our cultural institutions. There’s a great book that Tom McIlroy’s put together called Blue Poles. It tells the history of Jackson Pollock, the work, how it was sold and then the political frenzy of the culture war at the time. Culture wars are not new to this country. They just usually look embarrassing in hindsight. In Blue Poles, there is a beautiful line that I've often quoted, but it's there in black and white and I'm glad. It’s from Gough Whitlam, where he says: “Our other objectives are a means to an end. The enjoyment of the arts is an end in itself”. While that is so true and the arts would not have to be any more than there to be enjoyed, in cultural policy we acknowledge that the arts actually does deliver a whole lot more than the enjoyment of the arts.

The cultural policy Revive, as Larissa mentioned, is the first one to survive any length of time. When we put on the cover that Revive was Australia's cultural policy for the next five years, that was in fact more ambitious than it sounded. No cultural policy had lasted five years. Creative Nation from Paul Keating lasted about a year and a half and was then abolished at the change of government. Creative Australia from Julia Gillard and Simon Crean, lasted about six months - that was the time that I was first Arts Minister - and after a change of government, it was abolished. To have a cultural policy that has survived an election and is continuing to be implemented is something Australia hasn't had before. It's an exciting time.

Right now, we're at the moment where the structural changes - there's still a whole lot of recommendations we're still implementing - but the structural changes to Creative Australia are now complete. The Australia Council changed to Creative Australia, Creative Partnerships was brought in so that you had one body dealing with government funded, commercial and philanthropic. The First Nations Board was established, so for the first time you had First Nations ownership of a budget, making First Nations decisions within Creative Australia. Then you had the establishment of Creative Workplaces, acknowledging finally that working in the arts should not be seen simply as a hobby, it should be allowed to be seen as a profession and a career. We wanted to make sure with Creative Workplaces that if you view it as a workplace and a career, it's not simply about remuneration, it's also about safety at work and safety in all forms.

Then the two bodies to look at areas that had always been underinvested in and not adequately understood by the old Australia Council. That was Music Australia, acknowledging that contemporary music had never really found a serious place in funding. If someone suddenly got an opportunity to play at a festival overseas and the decision has to be made in the next week, you can't have systems that rely on ‘well you’ll be able to apply for the next round of grants in six months’ time’. Music Australia allowed things to be looked at in a different way. Writing Australia is there to acknowledge that writing has forever been the most underfunded part of federal arts funding and we have to draw a line under that and say no more. No more. Those changes are now complete with Writing Australia being established. 

The structure is not the end of a story, it's the end of my bit and it's a handing over to the board members to work out how can we best foster writing. I said before that quote from Gough is true but it also understates. While it's true that the enjoyment of the arts is an end in itself, the arts itself delivers. It delivers our understanding of self, it delivers our information to understand each other, it delivers the invitation for the world to understand us. 

To give the simplest example, Clare Wright's book, Naku Dharuk. I do secret reconnaissance missions to the cultural institutions without telling the chairs or the CEOs, largely just to have fun. After reading the book about Blue Poles, I ducked into the National Gallery, but before I went there, I went out to the National Museum. Having read Clare's book, when I looked at the Bark Petition and saw the signatures, for the first time I saw personalities. I knew the difference between the different people whose signatures I saw. I had an understanding of the meaning of the artwork that was around the perimeter. Now that's more than enjoyment. That's a connection to Australia that I have for something that, let's face it, is my business, petitions are petitions to my line of work, that's what they are. But had never understood it until it had been written and that gift is the gift we celebrate tonight.

The other thing that is so extraordinary - and Alex actually alluded to this in her opening comments - is the fact that your art form is the only one of the art forms, that even though we're holding a bit of paper or a Kindle or whatever reading device we might be using, we are not in fact interacting with the physicality of it. You're entering directly into our imaginations. Every other art form relies on one of the senses; we hear the music, we see the visual art, we watch the dance, but the entire world of the poem, of the novel, of the piece of literature, the entire universe of that lives within our mind and is pictured and felt and heard within.

The gift of that is put so beautifully in one of the children's books that we honour tonight. I have read more of these than you might expect across the board and for those of you who put forward the poetry - some of you would be aware of this, since I was 18, I’ve read a poem out loud every day - they are genius. Because I read them out loud, I never know where they're going as I start because I don't give myself the preview. I have a habit of doing it at the start of the day. I often don't start the day feeling real well because there is some serious grief and power in the words of that poetry. But it's extraordinary, just extraordinary work, and I want to acknowledge that.

But instead of quoting any of the poems, I just want to quote from the children's book A Leaf Called Greaf. Because having gone through the love of the physicality of a shiny leaf and then the horror of it breaking up, the story finishes with the understanding of imagination. “The memory of a single leaf called Greaf, that broke free from the tree, danced and swayed and floated its way down into Bear's heart, where he knew he could hold on to it forever.” You allow, as writers, what you have imagined to be held on to forever. It is a beautiful gift to Australia. The children’s work that starts in Yolngu Country allows story and language, and I shouldn't really put them as two separate concepts, to live not simply for Yolngu children but to be passed through to children all around Australia as an invitation to learn, an invitation to understand, but an invitation to taste, to smell, to hear, to feel.

And in doing that, tonight we celebrate all five of the pillars of cultural policy. We celebrate First Nations First, the foundation that is the invitation for every opportunity we have in creativity in Australia. The fact that there is a Place for Every Story and a Story for Every Place and so many of those stories are only told because of yourselves. The Centrality of the Artist in making sure that we need, we need you and the training of you from the moment you first became readers, right through to the honing of your craft as writers is something where we need to do better in making sure you can have a career and a successful career in doing what you do. In the Strong Cultural Infrastructure like the institution that we are in right now, and in Engaging to the Audience because in engaging with the audience and reaching people and making them feel thoughts and know characters and understand moments that they only are able to reach because of you is the other reason, beyond the Gough reason, that we need to back you, because what you do is so much more than the enjoyment of the arts itself.

Of the fiction categories, there are two different books which went to this concept. There was something in Fiona McFarlane’s book, Highway 13, and in Michelle de Krester’s Theory and Practice where each of them touched on the untold stories, which I really thought spoke to the heart of cultural policy. I just want to share each of them with you. Fiona McFarlane's Highway 13 deals, in the most ingenious way, with the reality that in crime fiction we always hear more about the person whose name really should not be remembered, rather than thinking about the lives of the universe of other people who are affected, and it's their stories that mustn't disappear. There's a chapter that is called The Podcast, and the whole writing style changes and changes fundamentally when you get to this, and you can hear the voices. Having read out the names of the people who had been killed by the serial killer, the presenter says this, “It's a lot of names, every one of them was a whole world full of love and curiosity and every one of these worlds touched hundreds of others. This is our flower laid out for each of you”.

In Theory and Practice, having been excited, enthralled and disappointed by different parts of Virginia Woolf's diary, the persona has been struggling with what read as anti-Semitic references to Virginia Woolf's partner. You start first with the specifics of that form of bigotry, but it then goes to a broader concept, which is part of my passion for cultural policy and part of what I feel tonight, through you, we are really achieving as a country. “I was thinking about wolves. Of course, Leonard minded when his wife called him the Jew or my Jew. Of course, he didn't show that he minded” - and this is where it gets to the key to that second pillar, a place for every story – “that was the meaning of assimilation. It trained us not to show that we minded. It trained us to pass. It trained us to disappear”.

In writing, whether it be for children, teenagers, for adults, whether it be in poetry, whether it be in fiction or non-fiction, you are making sure that people are seen. You are making sure that people who otherwise would have wondered, is it only me, find something that speaks so deeply and personally to them. When cultural policy refers to making sure that we know ourselves, that we've learned about each other and that the rest of the world sees us, it's really talking about the reason every one of you is here tonight. Thank you for what you do.