Missy Higgins is a star, but the decision to induct her into the Hall of Fame is ridiculous

Come on ARIA, stop pissing about.

It was shameful when you couldn’t be arsed organising new entrants into the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame for a couple of years, but you’re developing a habit of comical misjudgment now.

On Thursday, they announced that Missy Higgins will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, 20 years after the release of her first album. And that’s ridiculous. Just as it was when they inducted Kasey Chambers (19 years into her career) in 2018 and Jet (20 years in) last year.

Missy Higgins performing at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in 2019.Credit: Rick Clifford

Not because Higgins and Chambers are not intrinsically worthy: for it already is clear that not only are they major figures right now, but by the end of their careers they will have amassed awards, laudatory reviews, endless memories and the kind of widespread public affection that money can’t buy.

No, it is ridiculous because they are maybe midway through that career, still building those legacies. In the scheme of things, 20 years is a start. A solid start, better than most will ever get, but not anywhere near completed. Higgins, who is 40, has herself said: “I feel very much at the beginning of my career.”

ARIA’s argument is that rather than wait to the end or near the end of someone’s career/life, why not celebrate them as they are making the music. Which is sweet, but ridiculous, and suggests the people over at the music association don’t understand how this whole awards thing works.

Want to celebrate an artist as they are making the music? That’s what your regular ARIA award is for. You can recognise their current work as it happens, in real time, on a big night, with cameras. I know, right, what a concept!

They make a great album, give them album of the year; they’re the best example of hard rock or hip hop or pop, here’s an ARIA trophy; they use an Australian song in an ad, give them … wait. No, “best use of an Australian recording in an advertisement” is a stupid award, you know it and we know it. Stop it, you’re embarrassing yourselves.

The argument should have been received loud and clear with the contentious induction of Jet ahead of acts such as Powderfinger, Silverchair and You Am I. Specifically, the Hall of Fame should mark a career of length and substance, one that has not just achievement but sufficient space for perspective on their significance. Not one big international hit; not a hot run for a couple of years; not a zeitgeist moment; not the coincidence of a label chief executive with marketing cash to spend to pay for the hoopla around the award.

To be fair to ARIA, some credit should be given to them for trying to redress a woeful imbalance of male and female artists in the Hall of Fame, something overdue and rather appropriate for an industry and industry body that is yet to seriously reckon with abuse and mistreatment of women.

Women who are all deserving of a place in the ARIA Hall of Fame: Sandy Evans, Kate Ceberano, Vika and Linda Bull, Auriel Andrew and Wendy Matthews.

But if that is the goal, Australian music is not short of candidates, and it doesn’t take much thought to identify them. What follows is by no means the full list, so feel free to add your own suggestions.

Kate Ceberano has had a multi-faceted career of some 40 years and is still the woman most likely to be named by regular Australians when they’re asked to identify a significant local female artist. Sandy Evans remains a creative and inventive powerhouse of a perennially under-recognised but overachieving jazz scene. Where are they in the Hall of Fame?

Wendy Matthews, Vika and Linda Bull and Deborah Conway forged substantial careers when coked-up men with roving hands and sweaty minds ruled, and are still performing, still recording. Auriel Andrew remodelled Australian country music with an Indigenous core when bars and clubs wouldn’t let “her kind” in. And don’t forget Tiddas and Christine Anu later.

Margret Roadknight and Jeanie Lewis broke ground for independent artists generally and fiercely individual women specifically when women could barely get in the door. Jenny Morris and Lindy Morrison didn’t just establish themselves as significant artists – and while we are here, Morrison’s band, the Go-Betweens aren’t in the Hall of Fame, yet Jet are – but have gone on to be absolutely crucial activists and representatives on industry boards, welfare programs and government interactions. Morris and Morrison are people of substance the lightweights on the ARIA board could only ever dream of matching.

And best of all, almost all of these mentioned are still alive and available to turn up and be feted, rather than remembered posthumously one day.

Sure, none of these unquestionably important women have record company bosses to grease the palms and the wheels any more. They can’t promise to buy ads in the pay-for-play magazines that now dominate the industry. They are not going to excite TV advertisers or executives, or commercial radio execs, all of whom want the twenty-something spend. But you know what? That’s not what a hall of fame is about.

No one expects a lot from ARIA, a body flailing at the best of times, but it bears repeating to them: if you can’t remember and respect your past, what value can you bring to your present, let alone the future?

Bernard Zuel is a freelance writer who specialises in music.

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