Music

Matt Okine And Tina Arena Calling Out Gender Inequality Were The Best Part Of Last Night’s ARIAs

The ARIAs went wrong in the right way, for once.

by Alex McKinnon  27 November 2015

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Since 1992, the televised ARIAs have been recognising excellence in Australian music, attracting mediocre ratings and baffling overseas guest stars paid far too much to stand around and wave. They’ve given Australia some of our finest moments — Paul Mac thanking Sydney’s eccy dealers in his 1995 acceptance speech. The time Axle Whitehead got his dick out on stage in 2006. The subliminal advertising Channel 10 got pinged for in 2007. The infamous all-in clusterfuck of 2010.

This year, the ARIAs managed to attract controversy before they’d even really begun. Back in October, when nominations were announced and some non-televised awards were given out, Aboriginal singer Gurrumul’s win for ‘Best World Music Album’ attracted criticism for obvious reasons.

So it maybe comes as no surprise that the best moment of last night’s ARIAs came from people calling out the awards show and the wider entertainment industry for how they treat women in the business. Accepting an award for Best Comedy Release, Triple J’s Matt Okine said: “I don’t think there was any women nominated at all in the Comedy category. I don’t think there’s any women who are featured artists on tonight’s show, even,” besides Tina Arena.

“I didn’t feel great reading that list of people,” Okine said in reference to the all-male list of nominees in the Comedy category.

While the ARIAs regularly omit awards and speeches from the live broadcast for time reasons, the show and Channel 10 have drawn fire from viewers for not including Okine’s acceptance speech.

Okine wasn’t the only one to raise concerns of gender inequality in the entertainment business. ARIA Hall of Fame inductee Tina Arena used her acceptance speech to challenge commercial radio to play more Australian artists and stop shutting out female artists once they turn 40.

Namedropping Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Annie Lennox, Arena said: “We will decide when it’s time for us to stop.”

“I do believe radio has been a bit ageist. Who decides in radio a woman at a certain point in her life is not valuable?”, Arena told reporters after the ceremony, “Why is about our age and looks? There’s a big difference between a woman on her 20s and a woman in her 40s who has lived her life. You need to be proud of your age.”

Given how some outlets chose to cover female artists on the night, it’s hard not to concede that Okine and Arena may have a point.