Peter Garrett Online Forum

The most frustrating irony is that before all this State and Federal Government interference in the arts began, it was normal and expected for local Councils to build halls and theatres throughout all the communities they served. SA and WA were particularly rich in playing spaces, some still standing and in the most extra-ordinary of places. I spent some time in Cunderdin in WA during one tour with little to do but stare at the photos from the past hanging in an old pumping station, and I was staggered at the variety of music and theatre that the town could once support financially. There were several venues, some equipped as theatres, some as dance halls, and some able to be either and also suited to showing films. All that was gone. Now, that town has a franchise tavern, a town hall that no one ever uses, and gets all its music from a jukebox and its acted-entertainment from a DVD library. In the old days, the Council served the town because it was a community; now it seeks for photo opportunities with the Premier and the town is no more than a society.

You got the peer review system nailed. Right down to the board members awarding themselves the money. I was once nominated for a position on The Australia Council. I would have taken it, too, if I had been accepted - but then they realised who I was and you never saw anything dropped so fast in all your life. 

I, too, used to call myself an Anarchist. Then I tried Left Liberal. Then I had a go at Homeric Conservative. Now, I'm just a pest.      

Dance on, Logos, the music has barely started.

Noël Christian

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