Dr Mumbo

Switch to Mitch and a gentle ABC chat with the new communications minister

Mitch FifieldCritics of the ABC have claimed there’s been a sycophantic change of tone from the national broadcaster towards the Government since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister.

Dr Mumbo says this is nonsense. As this transcript of an encounter between new communications and arts minister Mitch Fifield and ABC Radio National’s Books & Arts presenter Michael Cathcart demonstrates.

CATHCART:
First up the arts are entering the post-Brandis era. Let’s meet the man who could shape that future and we’ll find out what this music means to him.
**Earth Wind and Fire’s “September” plays**
Victorian Senator Mitch Fifield is the new Minister for the Arts. Under Tony Abbott, Senator Fifield was Assistant Minister for Social Services and he had the important role of Manager of Government Business in the Senate and now he steps up as the Minister for Arts and Communications. So what are the passions, enthusiasms and ambitions that our new Minister brings to the job. And can he undo the anxieties and distress of so many people in the arts following the recent changes to arts funding? Senator, welcome to books and arts.

FIFIELD:
Good to be with you Michael.

CATHCART:
Thank you for coming in. Why that music?

FIFIELD:
Well I love Earth, Wind and Fire. I love the song September because it is the single greatest and best mood alterer known to man. Doesn’t matter what mood I’m in. If I put Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September” on, the mood only lifts.

CATHCART:
If you’ve had a crappy time in Question Time you just put that on?

FIFIELD:
Works a treat every time. And to start the day. I can’t tell you how I had to restrain myself from singing along as you were playing it at the start.

CATHCART:
So I gather you’re a fan of music of the 80s in particular?

FIFIELD:
Guilty. Guilty as charged.

CATHCART:
Ok here’s one, see if you can, we’re going to give you a little test since that’s your chosen field – who’s this?
*** Music plays***
You can buzz in as soon as you know the answer.

FIFIELD:
It’s Nick Cave?

CATHCART:
No, it’s not right.

FIFIELD:
No?

CATHCART:
It is Nick Cave.

FIFIELD:
See, I’m not bad, am I?

CATHCART:
You are good. I played the wrong one. It’s Nick Cave with ‘Red Right Hand’.

FIFIELD:
Very, very good.

CATHCART:
Let’s try the other one, the one I was going to play before that.
*** Music plays***

FIFIELD:
Hoodoo Gurus?

CATHCART:
No, not bad sir but stand by.
*** Music plays***

FIFIELD:
The Clash, the Clash.

CATHCART:
It’s the Clash yes, yes you get the car you get the stove you get the trip to…

FIFIELD:
Hoodoo Gurus probably a little inspired by them in some parts. But any way, a great song ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’. I think I’ll stay.

CATHCART:
I think if this doesn’t work out – the Arts Minister gig – you could become a disc jockey, you’ve got the voice for it.

FIFIELD:
I’d love to, I could say ‘Switch to Mitch’.

CATHCART:
That could really work. Let’s look at your other interests in the arts. I mean one reader, in fact the novelist Charlotte Woods, has asked me to ask you about your interests in fiction or reading, what kind of books do you read?

FIFIELD:
Mainly non-fiction. I’m typical of my generation and of my career, there are lots of political biographies. The fiction that I like are things like Jeffrey Archer’s First Among Equals. The Michael Dobb’s trilogy – Final Cut, To Play The King, House of Cards. Love works like that of Don Watson, from a few years gone by about the death of public language. He really was ahead of his time in nailing how public language, particularly that of politicians, was decaying through the use of banal phrases, things like ‘a suite of policies’ and ‘moving forward’. I religiously try and not use those phrases and when I see them pop up in my correspondence from my department I always scribble them out very quickly.

Dr Mumbo defies anyone to come up with a more challenging exchange than this.

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