Election in Bennelong Halts 100 Greatest Film Ever Project
Voting needed to be done, so I halted the project to think about issues which are more far-reaching than what is the most extraordinary, great, brilliant, excellent and exceptional movie ever-made.
What is interesting about my political voting history is that I never voted for an Australian Liberal political candidate; and I never ever thought of myself as a Labor voter because of my mise en scene.
The first Australian election for which I was eligible to cast a vote was when Bob Hawke ran against Malcolm Fraser. I voted for Hawke. Then I kept voting for parties based on Arts’ policies without thinking too much about the broader picture.
Today, I voted against Turnbull because I see him as the modern anti-Robin Hood. He takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
No matter how much rhetoric there is about how he is giving more money to Education, Health Care, and giving benefits to the people who are, living without a job, disabled, or in poverty: just like Trump, Turnbull is a man who is supporting lower taxation on the rich and less benefits for the poor.
I have never engaged in conversations about political parties since my first vote in 1980 or 1981. I voted on Arts policies. I disengaged from discussions about broader issues. Both sides are only in it for themselves, and what I saw early on was that the two major parties – anywhere – are only about getting power, adapting their platform to keep power, and giving concessions to anyone which enables them to win power for another term.
The most awful thing the politicians do is sell off National assets (privatisation) to give them a better plus & minus column: red and black. If they need to sell A1, which is bought by C and disadvantages all of A, so they can maintain power – they will.
I have lived a life only caring for the Arts (until Trump became President-elect in 2016). Now, I follow the Australian daily news (every so often – as many times as my phone updates me – so, several times a day) and care about a world beyond the world of Australian Arts.
I acknowledge that I have – in the past – tried to give a vote to a government, and for a party, that knows just how many people who live a life that is day-to-day or week-to-week; whose next meal is not necessarily tomorrow – because they are artists.
I know how it feels because I had employment only once in thirty-six years, from January 1990 to March 1993. I’m an artist who has three years and three months of superannuation and leave and has only had contracts – other than those three years – in a lifetime of work since I was seventeen years old.
As an artist, I’m itinerant. I had contracts as Music Director, and Composer and Recording Producer and Session Producer, Arranger, Session Pianist, CD Producer and CD Executive Producer.
That’s my life. But in that life – week-to-week or year-to-year – I’ve produced a lot of CDs. The majority of them I was paid to produce, particularly since 2008. Prior to that, the majority I was working for nothing. The 1987-2006 CDs I produced for free because it was my own record label.
Producing, however, is different from being the head of a major/minor label.
You can producer for free, but you can’t manufacture and distribute CDs – locally or internationally – for free.
I raised the money, $8,000 from a silent partner and $8,000 myself. Everything else was my time and energy.
That was a fulltime part-time job (1987-1993) alongside everything else I was doing in life.
