Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Professor Iain McCalman
Australian Academy of the Humanities
16 June 2004 - Canberra
The National Press Club Telstra Address

Preface:

John Byron
Executive Director of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and
Inaugural Secretary of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

This publication is a permanent record of Iain McCalman's landmark Telstra Address at the National Press Club in Canberra on 16 June 2004. It was delivered to a room full of academics, administrators, practitioners and policy experts who had descended upon the national capital to meet with federal parliamentarians and with each other, in order to exchange views and to learn about the sometimes mysterious work that other people do.

The address was given to mark the birth of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS), a new umbrella body representing the range of interests of researchers, educators and practitioners working across those associated disciplines. Before the afternoon was out, the gathered audience would bring CHASS into existence at its inaugural general meeting.

As McCalman noted, it was an auspicious day indeed, and it was certainly fitting that one who had done so much to realise this important initiative should be its usher.

The address more than met the sense of occasion. McCalman's passionate performance was at once a call to arms, a manifesto and a brilliant expression of the values that it elucidated. Inside that half hour, a group of individuals with broadly allied but diverse interests became a genuine community. Many of those present that afternoon have since expressed a sense of privilege at having witnessed a pivotal moment in the making of Australian culture. These claims may sound implausibly grand in sober print, but no one then present will forget the esprit de corps that McCalman stirred in his usually temperate audience. In five years of attending National Press Club speeches I have not seen such sustained and heartfelt applause.

Also present for the address were Mr Ken Randall, President of the National Press Club, and the two honoured guests of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Ms Matilda House, a prominent leader of the Ngunnawal people upon whose land Canberra stands, was invited in acknowledgment of the fundamental role that indigenous peoples play in the development and understanding of Australian society and culture. His Excellency Mr Declan Kelly, the Ambassador of Ireland, was invited as a mark of respect to another vibrant artistic and intellectual culture, which was celebrating a red letter day of its own.

The speech was broadcast live to a large national audience, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's television network. The National Press Club Telstra Address is recognised as one of the key policy vehicles for taking an important message into the public arena, and it provided a perfect context for the establishment of CHASS as a vibrant new participant in the education, research and practice arena, working for the benefit of the entire Australian community.

 

Introduction

Malcolm Gillies
Inaugural President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

The Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences is proud to launch its life in print with this brilliant address by Iain McCalman. Brilliant, I say, because anyone present at the National Press Club last June was well aware that this speech magically exemplified all those values for which these disciplines stand. Unlike most weekly Press Club utterances, McCalman's Making Culture Bloom is truly also a work of art, both as a real-time address captured on video, and as the timeless essay now reproduced in the following pages. With its message ringing in their ears, delegates moved into a general meeting from which CHASS was born.

Federation Fellow, President of the Academy of the Humanities, and one of Australia's leading social scientists, McCalman has long articulated the interests, demands and frustrations of a sector capable of contributing so much more to Australian society, a sector now overflowing with people of diverse talents, but often not recognised for the value of its contributions to research and education, to innovation and to national creativity. McCalman's speech touches upon the false separation from science, the value of both pure and applied knowledge, and the non-specific generosity of civil societies from which some of the greatest cultural outputs miraculously spring. More, it gives glimpses of the responses of other nations, and of the policy mechanisms whereby Australia, too, might gain more from the skills of its humanists, social scientists and artists.

The agenda for CHASS is bold, attempting to bring together under one national umbrella three disparate areas and their activities in research, education and creative practice. While research policy has been the spearhead of interaction with the Australian Government (which, through Minister Brendan Nelson, has provided substantial support for the establishment of the Council), education and creative practice are inextricably intertwined within CHASS's purposes. The research-led education often trumpeted by our universities equally demands educationled research. Whole research fields in Australia have died, and others are now dying, through lack of attention to regeneration through education. Equally important, the furthering of creative practice in the arts - that most intimate mirror of the concerns of a nation - is central to the purposes of CHASS.

Of the growing number of policies now being advocated by CHASS, one stands out as simple common sense. Iain McCalman refers to it in his address when he asks what Australia's equivalent to Joyce's Ulysses might be. The neglect of national culture and national heritage in Australia's first cut of national research priorities was an example of misdirected policymaking. CHASS has already taken up McCalman's call. For if we do not prioritise our own culture and heritage, I wonder, who will?

Download Iain McCalman's address   [PDF file size: 799.08 kB]   REF: SPE20040616IM

 

For more information, please contact:

Toss Gascoigne

Executive Director

Council of the Humanties, Arts and Social Sciences

Phone: +61 2 6249 1995

director@chass.org.au