Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the current state of the Australian music industry and the general decline of interest in and support for new Australian music in this great country. I recently came across an article in the paper which featured the Australian Top 40 music chart. I have to confess that I haven't been across the charts since the days of Molly Meldrum and Countdown, so I decided to do a bit of research to see who some of these artists were and, I have to say, I was a bit surprised—in fact, I was quite shocked. Seventeen singles on the Australian Top 40 chart were from US rapper Post Malone. Upon having a closer look, I saw that only three artists out of the 40 were Australian: Kasey Chambers, Missy Higgins and the DMA'S. I thought to myself that that couldn't possibly be right. So I asked around and did some further research to try and understand why this is the case. I was horrified to find that most people who are in some way associated with the industry believe that lack of a collective reason to support new Australian music is at the heart of it.

This may come as a bit of a shock to most of you in this place, but I don't have a musical bone in my body—I'm an old truckie after all, so that's fair enough! But I did grow up in the era of the hard rock pub bands of the seventies and the eighties. I was a long-haul truckie, driving between Perth and Darwin and to all ports in between for over 11 years. This meant that I had a heck of a lot of time on my hands, as I went through the years, to listen, firstly, to the radio, then to cassettes and then, in my later trucking years, to CDs.

When I was in my truck, driving the length and breadth of this magnificent country, I used to think I could pull off a pretty good Bon Scott impersonation, and I still do—I might do it for you later on tonight! Back then, if there was a radio station in range, you could hear the likes of Skyhooks, Sherbet, Renee Geyer, AC/DC, John Paul Young, Marcia Hines and many, many other legends of the Australian music industry. As the hundreds of thousands of miles clocked up, there was also AC/DC, Hunters & Collectors, Australian Crawl, Rose Tattoo, Divinyls, INXS, Cold Chisel, The Angels, Men at Work, 1927, Kylie Minogue, Tina Arena and many, many more artists who contributed to the rich Aussie music heritage.

As I travelled the country, I used to see posters advertising the performances of those bands and performers in towns across our nation. Many of them became household names. Those bands were part of the fabric of Australia. They went out to conquer the world alongside our sporting teams, businesses, arts and cultural acts of the seventies and the eighties. Sadly, we are not seeing that anymore. Why aren't we hearing and seeing acts to replenish those household names? Bands and solo artists have contributed to the Australian musical identity and the economy in an enormous manner over the last 50 years, and we cannot afford to lose that status on the world stage.

I go back to the 17 singles from the US rapper versus three singles from Aussie artists on the Top 40 chart. It seems like the desire of all the corporate radio networks to expose any new Aussie music comes down to the competitiveness of the very much changed business in today's internet age, where music is delivered in many, many ways.

As we sadly have no Countdown anymore, maybe the government can give our artists a radio station that will play their music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, whether they be 16 or 60, regardless of their music styles. As all the corporate radio companies are calling out right now for licensing fee relief, I've got a suggestion for the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Arts, Senator Fifield. How about you provide that on the proviso that they must and must only play new Australian music? Think about that. The more you play, the less you pay. I bet London to a brick that that'll get the money men loving Aussie music again.

I'm going to take this opportunity to call on all Australians to take a minute to email or call your local member of parliament to tell them, 'We want you to support our Aussie artists and new Aussie music.' The challenge goes out to Australia. Let our music and talent lead us to another great era for the Australian music industry.

I'm going to now move to my other favourite topic and I want to share with the chamber in the remaining minutes that I have an exciting project I have been working on for well over 18 months now. I had the opportunity through a very dear friend of mine, Mr Robbie Williams in Perth, a legend of the Australian music industry that goes back to the '70s with Michael Chugg, Michael Gudinski and others. Robbie asked me if I had heard of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, to which I replied, 'Absolutely not.' Robbie suggested I should probably Google it and meet him down at the Leopold Hotel in Bicton Sunday arvo at two o'clock for a cold one. And I did. This bus is an unbelievable state-of-the-art, not-for-profit mobile recording studio. But that's just the start of it.

I went to New York. It was arranged that I could meet up with the CEO and co-founder, Mr Brian Rothschild. I went to Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York. I saw the bus. I got on the bus. I met with students who were on the bus playing their music. The whole concept is that schoolkids can get on the bus when the bus gets to their school. They can write a song, they can write stories and they can record—there are all the musical instruments there—and by two o'clock in the afternoon it's up on YouTube and the whole world can see what these kids have done. Brian gave me a bit of a surprise, because he had one Yoko Ono Lennon waiting. She wasn't waiting for me—she was doing an interview—but I happened to be out the front like a schoolkid waiting to meet the great Yoko, and I did. I asked Yoko, if we could get a bus to Australia, if she would launch it.

So my fingers are crossed that we can get this darn bus built. Talk has gone on too long now; it's time to deliver. It will prick your ears—and a lot of people in this place know about it because I haven't shut up about it—to hear that it will tour Australia. There is a budget put together, and we're off and running. I have recruited these musical legends Michael Chugg, Michael Gudinski and Mark Pope—and Mark's resume is as long as Chuggie's and as long as Michael's—to work with us. But I also thought, 'I need to do this properly and I need to do it where it is apolitical and can deliver the best outcome for our kids in rural and regional Australia, giving our kids the opportunity to tell their stories, record their music, write their songs and anything else that goes with it.' That's before I start on cultural advantages that will come with this as well.

So we've joined up with another legend—well, legend in his own lunchbox, but I say that quietly because he had a crack at me yesterday!—in Senator Barry O'Sullivan. I wanted to make this across the chamber. I went to Senator O'Sullivan because he is rural. I know his commitment to kids goes without saying. Senator O'Sullivan and I are working on this with Michael Chugg, Michael Gudinski, Mark Pope and, of course, Brian Rothschild in the US.

I will have a lot more to say about the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. I have put the proposal wide in this building. All we're asking for is a measly sum of money to build this magnificent project. We don't want anything else. The philanthropic and business worlds will fund this. There's a lot of talk going on. But I am putting the plea to the government for the price to build this bus, to get it rolling on the highways and the byways of Australia and to roll it out to our rural and regional communities to give the kids who live outside the cities a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get on this state-of-the-art bus and write, play and record their music. I have spent many, many days rolling through the Kimberley showing it to the kids—Aboriginal kids and non-Aboriginal kids. How they would love to have a bus like this coming through their communities; it's overwhelming. I have not had one negative word.

So, on that, my plea is out there to the government to get behind Senator O'Sullivan and me and to get behind our music legends, who are putting their hard-earned time into this project for free because they are passionate about it. As I said in the contribution that I made earlier: we cannot let the Australian music industry die. This is what we have done. For people of my ilk, it is criminal that we don't have Countdown for Australian music.