We're under the Arts Council under the Minister for the Arts. The Minister for the Arts and the Minister for Industrial Development have great difficulty in agreeing over who should fund what in terms of film.
There are some issues where ministers should come and talk to the prime minister, if the prime minister hasn't already talked to them. Any issue which a minister thinks is going to be profoundly controversial, where we do not have a clear existing position, it is important that there be a conversation between the minister and the prime minister. I think they all understand that and I think it is working very well.
The people who fund the arts, provide the arts, and research the arts have all produced a consensus about the value of what they do, which hardly anyone challenges. But do the numbers add up? For all the claims made about the arts, how accurate are they?
In our party, for the post of the prime minister or chief minister, there is no race, and nor does anyone stake their claim. Who will be the prime minister or chief minister, either our parliamentary board decides on this or the elected MLAs, in the case of chief minister, and MPs, in the case of the prime minister, select their leader.
I see the difficulty of kids in going to university, the difficulty of kids in schools getting arts education, so that the arts and drama and the creative arts are extracurricular. They aren't: they are at the centre, and they are the equipment we so desperately need in the world.
I was a very senior minister in the Howard government and I sat around this particular table [in the prime ministerial office] in many discussions. The difference between being a senior minister and the prime minister is that ultimately the buck does stop with the prime minister and in the end the prime minister has to make those critical judgement calls and that's the big difference.
In less than a century after the barbarian nations settled in their new conquests, almost all the effects of the knowledge and civility, which the Romans had spread through Europe, disappeared. Not only the arts of elegance, which minister to luxury, and re supported by it, but many of the useful arts, without which life can scarcely be contemplated as comfortable, were neglected or lost.
The liberal arts are the arts of communication and thinking. 'They are the arts indispensable to further learning, for they are the arts of reading, writing, speaking, listening, figuring.
All the arts, music, the visual arts, acting and dancing arts, cooking arts, and I believe sports, will save the human race because they can leap over barriers, religions, leap over barriers of race, politics.
The arts are not a frill. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature, and help to shape our identity. What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? The arts. They have a wonderful universality. Art has the potential to unify. It can speak in many languages without a translator. The arts do not discriminate. The arts lift us up.
I have been represented as a Protestant minister; there was not one of the canvassers of the honourable gentlemen opposite that did not represent to the people that I was not a Minister of the Crown, but that I was a Protestant minister
I have been represented as a Protestant minister; there was not one of the canvassers of the honourable gentlemen opposite that did not represent to the people that I was not a Minister of the Crown, but that I was a Protestant minister.
Each government minister views the circumstances of each issue differently. An interior minister has a different view of visa liberalization than does a foreign minister.
I never criticized Modi. All I said was that Modi cannot be a chief minister and still nurse prime ministerial ambitions. I only suggested that he should resign as the chief minister and then stake his claim to be prime minister.
I have no ambitions to be a cabinet minister, or prime minister. I wouldn't wish being prime minister on my worst enemy.
I have completed 43 years in politics and have been a minister of state, chief minister, and a Cabinet minister. A person who survives so many years is bound to face some attacks. It doesn't affect me because I know the truth.
I see myself in public service in Zimbabwe. I would prefer an advisory role - cabinet secretary, minister of trade or the arts, or something like that. I don't want to be just a writer.