EYES widened in the arts community recently when the ANU announced the formation of a new advisory board for its School of Music, to be headed up by former politician Bob McMullan.

McMullan said at the time: “The Community Advisory Board will both be a voice for the ANU School of Music to the community and ACT government, as well as a way for our community to directly engage with the School.”

Some scoffed. After all, Kate Carnell’s government had defunded the schools of art and music in 2008 then partially refunding them on the condition that they incorporate community development into their curricula, creating confusion about objectives.

Then there was the debacle of 2012 when the ANU attempted to sack the entire faculty in a clean-sweep approach that forgot about staff entitlements and student courses. 

In 2016 incoming vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt commissioned a report on the school from former public servant Andrew Podger.

Sceptics supposed that report has disappeared into the capacious filing systems of the university, but as it turns out, they couldn’t have been more mistaken, as we discovered when we caught up with McMullan last week.

An enormously popular but short-lived Federal arts minister in the Keating government from 1993 to 1994, he’s lived in Canberra since 1981, becoming the first person to represent the ACT in both houses of federal parliament and retiring in 2010. 

He most definitely calls Canberra home and, after a five-year stint in London on the overseas board of the European Bank, he and his wife are back for good.

“When I left parliament, people assumed that we would immediately leave Canberra, but it never crossed our minds… This will be our home forever… our children and grandchildren are here and it’s where we want to live and be involved in the culture,” he says.

“I’d been doing some volunteering in film-industry organisations for a few years but gave up 18 months ago,” he says. 

“Then Andrew Podger approached me regarding a community-based council. I don’t have much musical ability, but I love the School of Music and when later someone from Brian Schmidt’s office approached me, I said I’d love to.”

He believes the school had to make sure that reforms were working before they set up such a council. 

“We had one meeting before shutdown and it seemed to me the place was really buzzing,” he says.

“I don’t really have the breadth of knowledge of other conservatories and musical schools but it seems to me that it’s on the way back… and Brian [Schmidt] has renewed the ANU’s commitment to the School of Music and the School of Art, too.”

He describes the head of the school of music Kim Cunio, as “inspirational”, praising his ideas as ones that, in time, will have real national impact.

“The first thing we have to do is to reach out, to talk to the CSO and the festivals, but the school’s got to get its foundations right before any advisory board can start to make some contribution,” he says.

McMullan is aware that the arts are not at the forefront of political consciousness in Australia, but says: “I was lucky, I was arts minister when Paul [Keating] was PM, perhaps it was similar under Gough [Whitlam] but I wasn’t around then.”

Interest in the arts, he says, rises and falls with the leaders and slips down the ladder pretty quickly, evident at the moment in the paucity of relief packages for arts people.

If McMullan is right and the School of Music is buzzing, then that’s coming from the top. Kim Cunio is keen to talk up the resurgence of the school, with 260 enrolments now – the most it ever had was just over 300. 

He hints at a new music-for-health program that will be launched later this year, to be overseen by flautist and neurologist Prof Eckart Altenmüller from Hannover, who was here last year. 

As well, a planned partnership with NIDA in Sydney, which is now doing postgraduate studies in creativity, may lead to a collaborative musical neuroscience and creativity program.

Cunio hopes the new advisory board will help to tell the good news stories, but notes that change must come slowly, as the school is first and foremost an educational institution.

Anyone interested in joining the advisory board should email kim.cunio@anu.edu.au