Archived at the Flinders Academic Commons: http://hdl.handle.net/2328/27231 This is a scan of a document number DUN/Speeches/3609 in the Dunstan Collection, Special Collections, Flinders University Library. http://www.flinders.edu.au/library/info/collections/special/dunstan/ Title: Don Dunstan - Inverviewed by Justin MacDonnell Please acknowledge the source as: Dunstan Collection, Flinders University Library. Identifier: DUN/Speeches/3609 © Copyright Estate Donald Allan Dunstan The Hon.Don Dunstan TRC 199U/1-2 Interviewed by Justin MacDonnell. Tape 1 Deals with Mr. Dunstanfs pioneering work in arts development in South Australia, whilst holding positions of Minister for the Arts, Treasurer, and Premier of that State. His part in planning the Festival Centre; development of New Opera, work with S.A.Theatre Company, Art Gallery, Film Corporation, Australian Dance Theatre, Theatre in Education, Regional Cultural Centres, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Tape 2 gives his opinions of several Federal Ministers for the Arts, Statutory corjgorations, funding, Labour Party arts policy, Jam Factory Crafts Centre, Adelaide. A story of outstanding achievement. TRC 199U/1 Interviewer - Justin MacDonnell HON. DON DUNSTAH. AC, QC. Tape identification - Justin MacDonnell for the Oral History Programme, speaking with the Honourable D.A. Dunstan, AC, QC, Premier of South Australia 1967/68, 1970/79. JM: Don, I suppose it's true to say that your name and the name of your government are almost synonymous in Australia with arts development, not only in the State of South Australia, hut more widely. You pioneered so many of the structures that exist today or have been copied, even where they have been modified, elsewhere in the Commonwealth. When you returned to office in 1970, and I guess it's primarily from the 1970 period of government that we're talking about, what was your philosophy about the arts, I mean what did you aim and hope to achieve? - in those developments? DD: I believed that the arts were an essential part of any civilised society, I wanted to make the arts available to people in the State, and arts at a level and of a quality which could be called good by any standards. We had actually done some work in relation to this before I returned to tSffice in 1970. Up till 1970 the State really didn't provide terribly much funding for the arts; there was no significant funding from the State of the Adelaide Festival, which was a largely private operation, backed by people who were prepared to put up guarantees. The State did make some concessions about electricity supply charges, things of that kind, but in 1967 Robert Helpmann was then working on his first Adelaide Festival and he expressed great concern at proposaiSb'which were then current in the State, for the building of a Concert Hall. The State had provided money to the Adelaide City Council, for the purchase of a property on Montefiori Hill, which was the site of an old Bonython family mansion called Carkley, and that was chosen as the site for a Festival Hall, and a proposal was put forward for the building of a rather covered-wagon type building, it looked like a covered&wagon from the outside; r Hon.Don Dunstan TRC 199^/1 - 2 - Interviewer - Justin MacDonnell. DD: contd., it was to be a concert hall, there was to be a small performing area of some non-descript kind behind the concert hall, all under a canopy which was a copper roof hung on hawsers. JM: Was that the fieggatani proposal? No. DD: No, no. And it was put forward by Sir James Irwin, who had been Lord Mayor of Adelaide. It was of course right exactly in the flight path of aircraft going to Adelaide Airport, and there was much unease in the community at the whole prospect. It was at that time that I was approached, by Robert Helpmann and by the Adelaide City Council, i/fco suggest,fiflhat we might fund a preliminary examination by Tom de Gartani of what was needed for a major performing arts venue in Adelaide. De Gartani came, I agreed to pay ten thousand dollars for a study by fie Gartani - he came and took a survey of potential asers and then came up with a form. He said we needed a two thousand .cum seat lyric theatre, opera house, concert hall, with variable ^acoustics, we needed a six hundred to seven hundred seat drama theatre, and we needed an experimental space, seating up to maybe foirhundred people,and generous foyer space which could be used for other social activities, exhibitions and the like, but he also said, "You can't put it stuck up on a hill outside the main part of the City,if you are going to have an effective centre then you must put it where people can feel that it's just part of the life of the City and they pass it every day and they feel that it's easy of access and is theirs. You can't hide it away in a university precinct or do something like that with it." JM: Or build it under water. DD: Or build it under water, yes! So, we then looked at numbers of possibilities for site. The obvious site was the TojJrens Parade Ground, because there would be no demolition required, it was in a very useful position, it was ready access; the Commonwealth own the Torres® Parade Ground, they don't use it terribly much, and it had been of course State property, but automatically transferred to the Commonwealth at Federation, as part of the military estab- lishment of Australia. So I went to see Fra«r in Sydney - or rather Canberra. rj Hon. Don Dunstan. TRC 199^/1 - 3 - Interviewed "by- Justin MacDonnell JM: He was then Minister for Defence? DB: He was then Minister for Defence, and asked could we purchase this from them. He said that they would have to be compensated for their prestige building on the site - I didn't think much of the prestige building, having done my exams in it, on numbers of occasions, public exams - but they wanted three million dollars for the building, which at that time was a rather strange figure to be asking, and that we must provide them in a similarly prestigious spot with a place where they could assemble their military displays. Well, that rather ruled that out, I couldn't see how we were g©mng to do all that for them, and we looked at a piece of ground between the Parade Ground and Government House, because on Kintor Avenue there is aa^fcisea there, and an area at the back of Government House, within the Government House grounds, which is simply not used at all, it's just waste area, and while that was not an absolutely ideal site it would have still have come within the criteria that had been |&id down by de Gartani. It was at that stage of proceedings that we lost office. In the interim period, before returning to office, I went on a study tour to the Unia&d States and to London, and I looked while I was in the United States at a number of art centres, like the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Kennedy Centre, the Lincoln Centre in New Yprk, the Atlanta Centre, to get an idea of the sorts of things that we were talking about in the meantime. The Adelaide City Council had accepted the de Gartani report and obtained from the Hall Government an undertaking that some railway land would be made available, if they took the old City Baths, and that was the site of the present Festival Centre. I had thought that that site was probably a bit too difficult, but there was an underground railway proposal current, and in addition to that there was a ground problem about moving the main smer and I thought the cost of all this was going to be too great. But it was the right decision - it is the best site, for the place, and all full marks to Steele Hall that he made that decision. They held a competition - well, they Kdii. Don Dunstan TRC 199^/1 - 5 - I nterviewed "by Justin MacDonnell DD: contd., asked for submissions from architects, and then they chose an architect, a local one,who went overseas with the Town Clerk and they looked at some Centres and they designed the building and started building it, before we got back into office in 1970. That was the initial concert hall, the Festival Theatre as it's called, the lyric theatre; so it was at that stage of proceedings that we returned to office. In the meantime, Robert Helpmann had urged upon me that there were two things that we B'erioasity lacked, in South Australia, in the performing arts area; one was that we didn't have adequate venues, we'd made a beginning about adequate venues but we had to provide much more than that. He said, "Bringing people to perform in the Centennial Hall or the Town Hall, or the occasional old picture theatre is Just any good any more." The second thing was that he said, "What is the use of trying to drag people from round the world largely on the old boy network, to come to Adelaide for a festival, when it is in no way an expression of what happens here. If you're going to make this festival work in the long term, it must be the culmination of what normally takes place within the State." Well, that struck something of a chord with me, I think.