St Lukes Symphony on the Waterfront-Devonport

Thank you first of all to Dave Gough for the welcome to country in a tradition that is ancient as it is generous. Thank you very much for that earlier today. Thank you to the mayor Alison Jarmon who suggested that I come, and to my friend Senator Anne Urquhart who demanded that I be here. And now that I’m here I can see what the vision here in the north west is, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Can I say when it comes to regional arts in Australia, right now, right here is the national capital of regional arts. No one else is doing it better than you are, no one. And that’s why we’ve got Kitty Taylor, one of your own on the board, that manages Creative Australia. That’s why if you go to the Paranaple just around the corner there and you watch the screen, about every half hour a work will come up, a visual work [inaudible] using some colonial paintings and putting images over the top of them. That work, is part of the National Gallery of Australia and when we were putting together the cultural policy we realised in our National Gallery in Canberra, at any point in time, 98 per cent of the work is in storage. And so we said, well hang on, if it’s the national collection, it ought to belong to the nation and so that work now, instead of being in storage being seen by no one, it’s in Devonport, around the corner on the screen of the Paranaple there, being seen by the community and being given life because the National Collection should belong to the entire nation, not just to Canberra.

Can I finally just say how wonderful it is to have an event like this, where one of Australia’s greatest orchestras is available whether or not you’re somebody who walks inside a concert hall. Where you can hear one of Australia’s greatest orchestras by turning up to an event with your neighbours; where you can hear some of the greatest music ever written including some work that’s been composed just for now; that we can celebrate that as a community. The arts at its best is making sure that what’s inside galleries and what’s in concert halls, and what’s in theatres, and what’s in library, also reaches into every single part of the community.  Because our music should be the soundtrack to life in Australia and our arts should inspire everything that we do, and art and great music should not only be available based on whether or not you can afford it. It should be there, and celebrated by every single one of us. And it’s a pleasure to be doing exactly that  with you here tonight. Thank you.