Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A fortnight ago I had to go to my mother's funeral. I am one of nine children, and we all had to get together to go over stories for the eulogy. One of the stories that came out was from a time when my mum had only two kids and was out on a farm near St George. She had two of the kids in the bath—in dirty brown water—and a black snake came through a hole in the wall. She, like a good country woman, got a gun and shot the snake. My siblings were telling that story, and I said, 'It's just like Henry Lawson's The Drover's Wife.' They said, 'What?' I said, 'Henry Lawson; you would have to read the story.' Seven of my eight siblings are voracious readers, so they all read lots of different things. But they are all readers. I said, 'Henry Lawson; you would have heard of The Drover's Wifeit's a great figure from Australian literature,' and none of them knew it. One of them was mentioning that in the eulogy and I said, 'I'll mention that it's just like The Drover's Wife,' and people in the church will understand. My mum was 78, so there was an elderly group, a range of people, in the church. In fact, many Chinese and Taiwanese from my community were there out of respect for me, even though they had not known my mum. I thought, 'They won't understand The Drover's Wife story, because it's an Australian historic piece of literature.' I mentioned that and afterwards, when I was doing a bit of a straw poll, I said, 'In the story about my mum, did you understand the reference to The Drover's Wife?' They said, 'No.' I thought, 'This is 2011.' I studied it at university. I am sure the minister or anyone who studied literature back in the sixties or seventies or who read Henry Lawson would have heard of The Drover's Wife. It got me thinking.

Obviously, the new Australians who came from Taiwan or China might not have read the story. Maybe their children will read it. I am not sure what goes on in the English curriculum. But what would our approach be to a national cultural policy to ensure that we include the iconic things that we need to have in the so-called Australian canon? It also got me thinking: how do we structure things? I am pretty passionate about the publishing industry and about books in particular. I know the industry has had some challenges. We have had some discussions in this party, particularly about parallel imports. The film industry is doing it a bit rough, with the Australian dollar being so high. When it comes to filming, it is hard to compete with places like Taiwan, New Zealand and even Thailand. We have these incredibly skilled people—set dressers, best boys, gaffers and cinematographers—who are rewarded at the Oscars as being world class, world standard, the best in their field—

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