Jim Soorley

Representatives of the elders, ladies and gentlemen. Let me begin by saying first and foremost, wasn't it wonderful to see that lovely little girl. The fact that we now have the Aboriginal community bringing their children to such events is probably a symbol of a change and I think it's important, seeing as we have enabled them to share of their history in song and dance with us at the very beginning of this meeting, to ensure that we do not exploit them as has happened for over 200 years and we're now exploiting their art, dance and history. Seeing as we have had them welcome us I think it's important that we begin this meeting with a clear statement and unless we make a clear statement, we are exploiting their history and their song and their dance.

The current Wik legislation is totally wrong and immoral and must be rejected. So while we enjoy some of the very ancient culture and song and dance, let's also recognise that we are at this very moment continuing the exploitation of this ancient civilisation and for those of you who come from interstate and may not be aware of it, let me tell you that sitting down there in George Street today as they prepare for parliament later this week, there are four cabinet ministers, four cabinet ministers who have pastoral leases and the Wik legislation specifically takes away the native title on those four huge tracts of Queensland and will give them freehold title at no cost.

So you might like to ensure that as you go to other parts of Australia, you will remind them and let them be aware that the exploitation of Aboriginal Australia continues in this state as it does in every other state, but that's not what weıre here today to talk about, but I thought it was important to preface my brief comments in response to the wonder of what we saw.

You're welcome, it's great to have you in Brisbane. We're delighted you're in our city. For those of you who live here you know it's a good place. For those of you who come from elsewhere in Australia you're now in Australia's most liveable city as long as you will ignore the weather for the next couple of days. It's really good to have you here and we're happy to support this because, I guess, for the last six years since this administration has been in office we have tried to, I guess, be pathfinders in a sense with community development and cultural development.

I'm not going to give you all the things we've done, you can read those. I want to try to give you the intellectual or spiritual framework that I work out of. I suggest some of you would know some of my background in terms of psychology, sociology, theology and philosophy, that my conviction about human nature is that there are three essential elements to a human being, that is there is a body element, there is a mind and intelligent part, and there is a spiritual part, and anyone who knows anything about medicine knows that sickness is really when there is some imbalance between the mind and the body and the spirit, and that to be holistic as a human being we must nurture and feed and care for the mind and the body and the spirit.

If that is the case for us as human beings, it's certainly also the case for us in the groups where we gather in our communities, in our cities and in our towns and as our nation. That's why the Wik legislation is so important. It is an attack on the spirituality of this nation and we will never be whole unless it's dealt with. But in terms of cultural activity obviously very much ties in with the spirit and for some people it also ties in, I guess, with the body and the mind but most importantly I think song and dance and music and literature, whatever form you wish it to take, it really relates to the spirit. It's essential to the life processes that we go through. So you know, the songs and the dance and the music and the theatre and the literature, the poems, the words are really, I think, part of our life processes.

So that's the philosophical background, I guess, that certainly we bring to our running of the city of Brisbane and that's why your national community cultural development conference interested us and we were happy to support you because, I guess, you know, being an old reconstructed community development person from a long time ago in a previous life, one of the first things we did here was bring community development officers to the city of Brisbane. Then we had to integrate them so our community development teams across Brisbane have open space planners and parks officers, they have cultural officers, they have sports officers, they have community development officers in the four regions around Brisbane.

The aim was basically to try to ensure that out there on the ground we actually deal with and try to work with and facilitate all that great diverse range of people and ambitions and desires and so on in terms of the life and activity and the vision and the energy of the city of Brisbane. That's very much what weıve tried to do. They've had some great successes, they've had some weaknesses, and we want you here in our city for your conference because I'm sure you'll be able to help us. We would like to pick up your ideas and try to ensure that we push them down into those community development teams and we actually give funding then across the board through a grants program. We have cultural development grants, we have community festival grants, we have lord mayor's performing arts grants to encourage young performers of the future to go overseas and study. We have sports grants, a whole range of grants where we work with all those community groups to try to get the most value for money. So for those of you who are unaware of what we're doing, I suggest you try to have a look at it.

Let me just give you a couple of illustrations: in the 95-96 financial year 4000 Brisbane residents directly participated in developing and implementing 42 cultural projects and festivals across the city. Nine and a half thousand residents and visitors attended 23 local neighbourhood festivals and events and approximately 70 per cent of all the grants we gave went into artists' fees so that it's not going into a bureaucracy at all, it's actually getting out there on the ground.

I think in the long term one of our most significant achievements will be our suburban centre improvements programs. I believe what is needed to nurture the body and the mind and the spirit of people in a big city is to encourage the sense of village and community. So across Brisbane in the last year we've developed 120 suburban centres, shopping centres to encourage people to go back to have that sense of space and time in a village, and the old village is where the history was passed on through word of mouth, where people used to sing and dance and communicate and just nurture each other.

I'll tell you, we did one of these in the early days and I went out to it. It's Kedron Brook Road, Wilston and this is why we really put a lot of money and time into it. Out there on Kedron Brook Road, Wilston, not long after we did it, were two older women sitting on the footpath having a cup of coffee and I sat down and talked to them and they hadn't known each other. They'd lived in Wilston all their lives, their husbands had died, their children had gone and they did not know each other but as we actually created a sense of village in Wilston by getting the trucks off the road and encouraging the traders to widen the footpath for people to sit out there. Theyıd come down and they'd met and talked and had become friends so we'd actually put a bit of space back into Wilston where these two people had lived there for 50 years basically and were alone, had met and a friendship had evolved and they were now active in that sort of little community.

On top of that we then overlay our festivals. Wilston gets a grant every year to have a community festival. Local artists are funded to actually celebrate the part of Wilson. We give the historical society some money so there's a sense of history and that process from Blackwood Street, Mitchelton to Wilston, to Sandgate to Stones Corner to Mount Gravatt, right across Brisbane is really, I guess, our sense of vision and in each one of those, in every one of those shopping centre upgrades that we've done there has been artists employed to actually create the space, to give it a sense of vitality and history and energy. It has worked so well for us.

So can I say, I guess, to conclude, and I'm not going to say any more, we're delighted you're here in Brisbane. We are delighted that you bring your energy and your vitality and your sense of the spirit to our city. I know our city will be a better place because your conference is here. But I'd like to think that it's not transitory. I'd like to think that we will be able to pick up one or two of the initiatives, the ideas, your creativity from around Australia. We want to learn, we want to ensure that there is the opportunity at a local level for the very important - and I mean that seriously - culture as I see it is of the essence of a successful and happy human life and of the essence of a happy community.

There are two forms of censorship that are emerging in terms of cultural activity. The first one is probably pretty obvious because it's always ugly and it's always a confrontation. That is the moral right; those who think that thatıs not art and this is; those who wish to ensure that their particular form of religion or their particular form of spirituality is imposed on everyone else and that's always ugly and it's always easy to find and easy to identify and hopefully easy to reject. It's not a real spirituality, if it was they wouldn't be threatened by diversity and difference. It's very false and shallow and itıs ugly.

The second form of censorship that I think is having a bigger impact is much more pernicious and less obvious, and that's the economic rationalist form of censorship where if you do not agree with me, if you do not agree with the way I express myself, if you do not agree with the way I do anything, then I'll cut off your money. It's never at blatant as that, it's much more subtle, it just is that you disappear off the list. You never know why, there's never a reason, it's quite pernicious and vicious and across Australia the economic rationalist agenda is reaching its peak, I hope. I think there is a beginning of a winding back but you as artists, you as people of the community, you as people who represent the sense of culture, the sense of challenge, the sense of spirituality, the sense of difference, the sense of celebration, you have an important role to play.

Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid because if you actually succumb to the economic rationalist agenda, we will all be dead. We will all die inside. The economic rationalist wheel is turning and I believe - you know, there are a few of us who have never really accepted it too much and have just tried to hang in there. The economic rationalist wheel I think is turning and I think we will see a sense of return that we must put money into community and into celebration and into life and if they were smart enough really with their economic rationalist agenda and took the long-term view, even from their own ideology, in the long term it's well worth investing in the sense of community, the sense of culture, the sense of celebrating our future.

Have a great conference, it's good to have you in Brisbane and Good luck.

Forward: Dr Margaret Seares