Award-Winning Composer Makes Plea To Save ABC

Renowned composer Antony Partos has called upon the wider music and screen industries to fight against proposed ABC budget cuts in an impassioned speech at last night's Screen Music Awards.

Partos picked up two awards on the night alongside co-writer Custard's Dave McCormack and took to the mic when accepting their award for Best Music For A Television Series for their work on Redfern Now's Stand Up episode. Calling upon members of the industry-heavy audience to make their voices heard over media regulations and the future of the ABC, he received a standing ovation from sections f the audience.

Fellow award winner Cezary Skubiszewski threw his support behind the sentiments and admitted feeling quite “emotional” when receiving his award directly after Partos' acceptance speech.

Today Partos has supplied the full transcript of his speech to theMusic.com.au.

Antony Partos' 'Stand Up' Speech

Stand Up is about a young Aboriginal student standing up for his rights, and it is in this spirit that I want to address you tonight.

I believe that this country is heading in the wrong direction. I believe that it is going backwards in regards to:

i) The environment,
ii) human rights,
iii) an open and transparent government and a
iv) free and independent media.

I believe that if we do not make a concerted effort to take a more proactive stance on these issues that come the next election, we will have lost forever many of our natural resources and aspects of our culture we now take for granted.

As this is an industry night I will keep my speech relevant to the challenges our industry now face.

Currently our Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, is in secret trade discussions with the Trans Pacific Partnership and on the agenda is the potential for Australia to give up our local Australian media content rules. If this were to pass it would have the potential to decimate our industry, as it is so much cheaper for TV stations to simply buy in American content rather than produce our own.

Just last week the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party passed a motion to sell off the ABC, whilst other members of the party are calling for massive funding cuts or for the ABC to broken up. This also has the potential to have a huge impact on our industry.

If you think I am exaggerating the path that we are heading, I urge you all to Google the Institute Of Public Affairs and its 75-point plan that it wants Tony Abbott to commit to. It makes for a truly scary vision of our potential future and what's even scarier is that in the first 100 days of government, that Tony Abbott has ticked off so many of these points.

I believe it's not enough to simply grumble to ourselves about our plight. We need to lobby our MPs, not only at an industry level but also as individuals. I urge you all to stand up for what we hold sacred in our country, or even for what we all take for granted.

If you want a well funded ABC, please let the arts minister George Brandis know, let the Communication Minister, Malcolm Turnbull know, let your local member know, let the media know and for God's sake let Tony Abbott know!

Thank you.

Lobby group Get Up! have started a petition to 'Save ABC' here.