Page 2535 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 13 August 2014
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I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to all those who put their lives on the line to protect our planet and its precious natural resources, whether they be rangers, Environment Protection Agency staff, compliance workers, firefighters or indeed environmental activists.
Mr Peter Sculthorpe
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (7.00): Madam Speaker, I am sure you will agree with the minister’s speech about Peter Sculthorpe. I know you are a great patron of the arts and would also like to have on the record your appreciation of the efforts that he has made over an amazing lifetime. His work is interwoven into modern Australia. I do not think there are too many people who can say they had a significant part in the opening of the Opera House. To have composed the piece that was played at the opening is a remarkable achievement. I think somebody who has done a great deal to make sure that particularly the Canberra community is aware of the work of Peter is, of course, Chris, and it is a pleasure to welcome you and your son, Johannes, here this evening.
It is important that the works are played, it is important that the works are revisited and it is important that the works are interpreted so that they are not a static piece that relates to just one instant in time. I think Peter understood intimately that the Australian landscape was changing constantly and that his work needed to be reinterpreted many times over.
I am particularly pleased that, beyond the musical legacy, there was the announcement that his papers will be given to the National Library of Australia so that those that come after him may be able to go back and say, “What was he thinking at that point in time? How did he arrange this? Have I got this right or can I challenge what he did?” I do not think Peter was ever afraid of people challenging what he had done, because he had spent a life challenging all of us to try to listen to the Australian landscape through his music. And that is a remarkable talent.
There was a book published just recently, I think it was called, What colour is music? I think Peter would have intimately understood the colour of music, because he was able to portray in his works the colour of our magnificent landscape. In the European context, everything is pretty much green—for most of Europe, shades of green—whereas in Australia it is everything from black to white, from green to grey. It is those tremendous colours in the landscape, whether it be the reds of the soil, the black soil in Queensland, the grey soil of the western plains, the red soil of the interior.
When you hear particularly Great South Land, what was it he was trying to say? I guess that the challenge for all of us is to keep listening to it to see if we can hear what it was he was trying to say.
Particularly for the members of the Ginninderra Sea Scouts, if you have never heard a piece of work written for the didgeridoo, perhaps your leaders might dig some up and on a night soon you might have a Peter Sculthorpe night down by the lake and then listen to it in the context of the water. Again, it is that great challenge of what we hear as opposed to what he was saying.
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