Hot Seat: Jay Weatherill, South Australia’s Premier and Arts Minister

As a long time music fan who used to sneak into pubs to see bands as a teenager, Jay Weatherill’s vision for Adelaide invariably intertwined with live music. It includes a bustling laneway culture, late night venues, and ways to give young creative energy the chance to be spotlighted. Turning Adelaide into a thriving cultural city, he explains, is also part of the bigger picture. A vibrant city draws the sort of brainpower and talent from all sectors which make it a global city. Recently, the South Australian Government changed the law to make it easier for small venues and bars to start up without red tape. This month, the Government’s Thinker In Residence, English festival promoter Martin Elbourne, will present his recommendations for SA’s live music sector.

The amount of applications from young club and bar operators after the passing of the small venue and bar legislation seems to be gratifying. 

It has been. The starting point was a personal thing, to travel around the world and see incredible places with a real festive vibrancy about them, and the role live music gave bars where people could gather and have a street party vibe. When we started to work out what Adelaide needed, a starting point was that a criticism that Adelaide faces is that it’s a bit staid and conservative. We wanted to do something to excite the CBD, and obviously we looked at live music to give it a lift. We looked at everything. Among these were regulations that made it really difficult to start a venue up. So we introduced these new licenses. If young people want to have a crack at it, then they won’t be pushed aside by the larger established interests.

Austin, Texas, would be perfectly suited as a gameplan for what Adelaide is trying to. Both are medium sized city (Adelaide’s population is 1.26 million. Austin’s is 820,000), with a lot of venues, with strong technology and advanced manufacturing sectors, and recently gained a new common tie: both will now home to the V8 Supercar Series. Is Austin a role model? 

Interestingly, Adelaide and Austin are sister states. In fact we’re trying to revitalize our ties with Austin. We’ve had discussions with people there on how to deepen those links because Austin has gone down that path in a pretty big way.

Obviously your vision for the Adelaide contemporary music sector is more expansive than just live music? 

I’m looking at creativity, especially of young entrepreneurs who want to get a start in Adelaide. We want to make things easier. Creativity is the heart of what people love about Adelaide, and we made a conscious decision to encourage that creativity. It’s where our future lies.

Martin Elbourne’s report doesn’t come out for a few more weeks but I believe that you and he already have had some discussions. One of these has been cracks in SA’s music industry like the lack of world class managers and world class record producers. Can South Australia rise to such a challenge? 

Martin has big ambitions for the state but he’s a practical guy, especially on how to get from Step A to Step B. He sees some good things. He’s impressed by the venues, for instance. He’s diagnosing some of the cracks. Like, there are a lot of government agencies that help small businesses get going but they don’t treat the contemporary music industry as an industry. He can see support that isn’t being tapped into. It’s not all about making money, there are things that could make it easier for people trying to make a living out of music. Martin’s allowed us to look at Adelaide in a new light. He’s identified parts of the city that could work quite nicely together. I don’t think we’ve put the jigsaw puzzle together, he’s allowing us to do that.

I’ve always maintained the importance of getting an overseas perspective when we analyse and confront challenges in Australia.

I agree. It’s important to get someone with an outside perspective, and someone who comes without any baggage so he doesn’t really care whom he upsets! Sometimes when you go overseas and come up with ideas, it becomes difficult to translate them here. But the Thinker In Residence idea is that they can test their ideas here. It’s a much more effective way than going on a study tour and only realizing they don’t fit when you try and implement them here.

Is a keystone of your strategy for the SA music sector that it has to help itself rather than wait for Government handouts? 

There is a bit of that. But of course, a huge section of the music sector doesn’t want the Government to poke its nose in its affairs. Some see it as constraining. We’ve got to get the balance right so that we’re helping but not hindering as well. There are so many small things we can do which can make a big difference. Bringing people together to have the conversation has been a big step forward. For instance, when we procure music for the various advertising that we (in the Government) do, using local artists should be done as a matter of course. But we probably haven’t thought about the music industry, in the way we would have if we were building that would include local contractors.

Allowing people to make their own futures is another. I want to give people with creative ideas the space to express themselves, which is what we did with the Small Bar legislation. A lot of us (in Cabinet) grew up with some great pub bands around Adelaide. You could get close up to these guys, they’re great experiences people remember. We’d love to have more of that.

In which ways can we increase private investment in SA contemporary music? 

That’s one of the things that Martin is going to be helping us with. Recently we increased our support for live music by $350,000. It’s also mandatory to do some research on ticket sales and demographics, to measure what you got, which I think Martin will touch on.

Martin also has talked about setting up the South Australian Peer Group where you get all these people who started out in South Australia and achieved global distinction – are encouraged to come back and mentor. For instance I believe one of Depeche Mode’s management is from Adelaide.

Yeah you hear these great stories. That’s a fantastic idea.

If the Government agrees with all or any of Elbourne’s recommendations, how soon will things get moving? 

We’d like to act on this before the end of the year. I think the recommendations will be easy to consume, and easy to act on.

What was the first gig that you went to and the first record you bought? 

The first record was by Suzi Quatro. As for gigs, we’d go down to the Seaton Hotel, at the shed at the back, where bands played. My first major show would have been INXS. Was I under-aged at the time? I can’t reveal that! (Pause) Well, I worked it out once and I must have been!