Craig Quartermaine On Local Social Enterprises Serving The Needs Of Diverse Communities

Originally from WA now based in Brisbane Craig has appeared on Comedy Central's The Jim Jefferies Show Triple J’s One Night Stand Up and is now Co- Host of Movin to the Country on ABC TV.

Craig has worked with international acts like Hannibal Burress, Naseem Hussain and Jim Jefferies. He has performed around the world with Edinburgh award winning Comedian Brendon Burns in their acclaimed show Race Off and at the Sydney and Melbourne International Comedy Festivals. Craig’s politically charged ,socially conscience comedy has taken him across the world, and he doesn’t take a backward step.

Craig discusses the power and potential of comedy for factually accurate and critical storytelling, and how local enterprises are best positioned to provide on the ground support to diverse and often disadvantaged communities.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what led you to the work you're doing now?

[Craig Quartermaine] - I'm originally from Western Australia, but I’ve been living in Brisbane for the past four years. I was originally working as a chef's apprentice when I crashed my grandfather's vintage Valiant. I couldn't afford to pay for it, this was in the early 2000’s.

I ended up working in the mines for just under 10 years as a young man during the mining boom, and I was reflecting my life. I grew up as a younger kid in North Queensland, but I was an Indigenous Western Australian from down South. I never quite fit in, but I loved growing up there. I think that always affected my personality and the way I enter groups; I developed a sense of humour to make myself stand out a little bit.

At the end of my mining career, I started doing community radio, and that then developed into a media career. After nearly 10 years in the mines, I started looking for other things to do, and community radio led to me starting a scholarship with the ABC. It was one of those big leaps you need to take career wise if you want to transition. I started to feel this dread when I hit 28 years old, and I started from the bottom producing and presenting radio.

I worked my way up the ladder, and while it feels slow in retrospect, I did make some big steps in my media career from radio to TV. I became a TV journalist for five years with NITV and dabbled with the ABC as well. Then I started a comedy career, because there were a lot of issues, I had with the process of how journalism is conducted in Australia.

But, like any narcissist, I felt that my voice needed to be heard, or my opinion needed to be expressed! That manifested into comedy, and it has paved the way for other opportunities. A good friend of mine said that doing stand-up comedy makes everything else easy, that's why you do it. It lends itself to every other career I have.

Right now, I am a professional comedian who also produces videos for a small organisation called Logan Together in the city of Logan, Queensland. They do amazing community work, and I’m also the Queensland coordinator for the National Indigenous Culinary Institute, where we recruit and train Indigenous chefs.

Those are my two-day jobs that lend themselves to my comedy. I'm in a sweet wicket now.

Please share more about this shift you made into comedy and why you did so.

I've told this story a few times, so I hope it doesn't sound too rehearsed! Essentially, I got an injury from when I played my only game of rugby league ever. It's a stupid game, and it hurt my knee. During recovery, I listened to the audio recordings from Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David's comedy show. On the audio track, Larry David said, “if you think something and don't say it, it's probably hilarious, so write it down.”

While working as a journalist, I thought the argument that there are two sides to every story is ridiculous. There absolutely isn't, there's the truth and facts, and whatever else exists is superfluous. For my job, because of the societal structures that are in place, I would be interviewing people who I didn't feel had the gravitas or the knowledge to be commenting on what they were commenting on.

Basically, I was passing judgment, because I'd turned up to a story and assessed the facts as I knew them to be, but for some reason, you would need to conduct an interview with a certain person. I found myself during interviews listening to these people thinking, "wow, you're an idiot. You should not be speaking, and we shouldn't be putting a camera in your face. We should not be expressing your opinion." Thank God that's not happening anymore, things like the referendum aren't affected by ill-informed morons!

I eventually became frustrated with that job, so I started taking notes every time I would interview somebody. I wouldn't say something because I couldn't, I had to be a neutral journalist. But eventually I built up a notepad. Then we moved back to Perth from Darwin, and I just said to myself I needed to get these thoughts off my chest, so I just went and did five minutes of standup comedy.

I've always loved comedy, and I did five minutes in an amazing room, the Brisbane hotel called Shapiro's. I got offered a spot straight after I did my first five minutes, and that rolled on ever since then.

What’s different about the comedy you perform?

I find I like to use political and historical contexts for a lot of my jokes. There's nothing more fun than watching people Google a joke of mine, find the vein of truth, and be blown away. The history books and stuff I read now to generate my material I couldn't make up. Australia has a naive attitude to history, and whether it's naivety or they're intentionally trying to ignore Australian history I’m not sure. A lot of Australians go into comedy shows thinking, “let’s hear about how weird we are and how hot it is here.” I hit my audience with facts and truths, but if you make it funny you get their attention. I try not to play into stereotypes and battle any preconceptions of Indigenous men and people in Australia. I think I'm a little bit different now because there are not a lot of working-class comics anymore. If there are, they find it hard to attract an audience. I think I'm just different by nature because of my background.

Have you received any feedback from your audience regarding your style of comedy?

If they don't message me after the show, people who know what I'm talking about will run up to me and say, "we totally saw what you're talking about!" For example, I had a joke about the people who protest having to wear a mask have no problem wearing a balaclava and burning crosses in the Grampians.

That was happening in Victoria a couple of years ago, and literally two people ran up to us and said, "yes, we were there, we saw them doing it! They were filming themselves, and then they went and got some coffee from some Indian people who were nice. It was weird." I either get direct personal stories and people checking the most random facts I state.

I do love the direct stories, but I also get messages afterwards with people who were at places I speak about or who have visited the towns I address, because I do try to pay attention.

It is amazing how comedy can be a space where the social, human, and environmental constructs we live and work within can be explored or commented on? What do you feel is the potential that lies in comedy and laughter?

I once had an interesting conversation with an author; we caught a plane together coming back from Sydney to Brisbane. I think quite highly of this person, and it was interesting what we talked about. People have a very different attitude towards humour and what you can and can't say. This is a well-worn trope, but I don't think anybody owns an experience.

I don't think you should be offended on behalf of other people. Jimmy Carr says, “whatever you think of a joke, you're correct, but that's where your jurisdiction ends.” Your reaction is your reaction, but the minute you start thinking on behalf of other people and you start trying to censor speech on behalf of other people, I strongly disagree with that.

Your opinion stops with you. I watch people on stage sometimes and I cannot fathom what people are laughing at. I have quite a dark sense of humour because of my background, culture, and upbringing. I veer on the dark side of the heavy, hard stuff with my comedy. My younger brother passed away in October, which was a bit of a family tragedy just recently, and even then, we still had jokes at the funeral.

It happens, your laughing's involuntary, and if I knew exactly how to make every single person laugh, I'd be the wealthiest comedian in the world! All I can do is perform stuff I think is funny on stage, and I write or die by my decisions on what I write and create. But I also feel I don't joke about stuff unless I know what I'm talking about, and there are people who get on stage, and they don't know if what they wrote is funny.

You can have an idea, and you can test it, but if you're talking about a concept, social group or any topic you don't know about, then it isn’t funny because you didn't put in the work, effort and research. You get out what you put in with comedy, that's what I appreciate.

There's comedy and then there's show business, so with comedy you get out what you put in. Show business however, that's a whole other animal I hate. I wish it would just dissolve in a vat of something; show business can get in the bin. But as far as comedy, if you do your research and put in the leg work, audiences care about the vessel.

Audiences don’t enjoy seeing you on stage if you’re trying to talk about something the crowd doesn't perceive you to be an authority on. If you do that, you're going to bomb and bomb hard, but that's the dance. There are people in comedy scenes who say, "you can't talk about these topics." I say to them, “you can't, but other people can.” You don't get to have everything; you have to work with what you’ve got.

I do enjoy watching people get mad at audiences. Some comedians will start saying, "what's wrong with you people?” This is opposed to good comedians who say, "did you assess the room? Do you know your material? Are you expecting people to see the world through your eyes?” The easiest thing you can do is reflect the audience to themselves, because that makes sense to them.

I tend to talk about stuff people don't think anyone's going to notice about them. I turn up to shows an hour beforehand and watch the crowds. Again, I do quite a bit of research into the topics I want to talk about, that's my journalism background helping me a lot. That's also been an advantage of getting into comedy at 33 as opposed to 18 years old, where you don't know anything.

Being 33, I’m still quite young, but I’ve had some resemblance of a life before being a comedian. I knew how to draw on those experiences and have a genuine curiosity about why people think the way they do. I like to focus on human nature, it is fun.

It's an amazing exercise if you can do it. There are people who just try to make people laugh, but laughing is involuntary. I enjoy leaning into the dark subjects, I don't know what leads me there or why I aim for it, but audiences tend to appreciate the risk.

There are people who will go and watch a comedian who is rich and has a great job, and more power to them. They get on stage, and talk about their family and job, and whatever, that’s great. I find that stuff beige and there are audiences who will get something out of it, but I quite enjoy when you go watch a comic and they just hit you in the face.

The best compliment I ever received was from Lewis Garner who is not a comic. He's doing well for himself in Melbourne, and he just said, “your comedy is really piercing.” I don't know why this compliment felt so good, but that's the way you can describe it, very piercing. I want people to laugh of course, but you’ve also got to be happy with your own performance.

Don't get me wrong, a huge part of the Australian comedy scene isn't that strong from a financial point of view. There's a room for five people and you could probably list them! They're on every program, and that's what Australia wants, so I've got to be a working comic. I've got to do corporate gigs; I've got to stand in front of 300 people who don't know I'm going to be there and make them laugh.

I must be malleable and able to play any room, but that’s a huge advantage of living in Brisbane. Brisbane's comedy scene is quite unstructured, you need to be able to play a pool room where they haven't even turned the Keno TVs off while also being able to perform in a theatre. That definitely hardens you as a comic.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across creating a positive change?

The organisation I work with, Logan Together, are a community organiser. I've been with them for four years now, and they're amazing. Obviously based out of Logan, what they really do is just connect people.

For people who are outside of or around Queensland, Logan is a punchline, but when I started working and living there, I realised this is because poor brown people live here. That's all it is, anywhere that has those social dynamics are mocked by people outside saying, “the people with spices are so scary!”

No, they're not.

Logan Together helps refugees, Indigenous, Pacifica, and all these other communities find the services they need. That might sound broad and vague, but it's that simple. I had no idea that there were so many refugee people in Logan, and they don't know where to find daycare or a hospital.

Logan Together is this little group (there are twelve of us in the team) who go out and help people find social support, healthcare, daycare, anything you can list for these people. The great thing about this team is it consists of people from that area, so they all can help others. It’s fun to be a part of, and I'm their media guy. I produce videos for these organisations that can't afford a commercial to share on social media.

I capture a lot of stories. The best piece of community work I've noticed is the Afghan Women’s Support Group. This is just one of many stories, but they help Afghan refugee women of all ages. The ones who impacted me the most were the ladies 50 years and over, because these are the grandmothers who left their home and moved to this strange place.

Now they can't leave the house because they don't have a license or their English isn't great. This group was specifically set up to help them figure this all out, and it's gorgeous. I love seeing this work, there’s nowhere near awareness that these organisations exist.

There are other projects in Logan like multicultural sports leagues which keep kids from all backgrounds out of trouble by giving them sports to play in the afternoons, and while it sounds simple it's huge for those people.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I’m a bit worried because of how macabre I'm going to sound with my answer. People will be thinking, "is this guy a comedian?" I've been in a bit of a phase and mood since the referendum. People keep saying, "I can't believe this happened,” and “why is Australia like this?"

I've been reading a lot of history books written from different angles, and the only one of these books I've finished now is this first one called Biting the Cloud by Dr. Fiona Foley. It's a Badtjala book from Queensland talking about the opium trade in Queensland that used Aboriginal slave labour. It touches on a lot of the interesting historical aspects throughout Queensland.

I've just finished that book, and it’s quite intense. I've also got the book Every Mother's Son is Guilty. Now this is a book by Chris Irwin, and he writes about blackbirding. Blackbirding was essentially the slave trade of Aboriginal men in the Kimberley back in the early 1800s.

This book has all these titbits showing why Australia set up the way it is. Why are these suburbs and streets named after people? Because they're all cattle farmers and who did awful things. That's why Australia is set up this way, and it's cool to know descendants and who they really are.

Then there are two fictional books I’m reading now. Have you heard the phrase ‘the Lucky Country’? Well, that was originally a diss, a straight up insult by an author named Donald Horne. He's a white guy from Sydney, and when he said Australia was ‘the lucky country’, he meant it disrespectfully. He wrote a whole book about this back in the 60s, so I'm looking into that now. That fact just made my world, knowing that phrase everybody hangs their hat on is an insult.

Finally, I'm halfway through Leviathan by John Birmingham, he's the guy who wrote Dante the Falafel. It’s a fictitious history of Sydney, and he wrote these using facts and other information. He turned this information into this amazing story, and I basically draw on all these books to influence my comedy.

Any parting thoughts before we wrap up our interview today?

Go out and watch comedians. I just did the Sydney and Melbourne Comedy Festival, and I will do the Brisbane Comedy Festival.

Please take a chance on a different artist. Go see someone small, because these guys with the 800 seat theatres and massive publicity posters have money already. Test yourself by consuming different art and watching different people, trust someone you haven't seen before.

The amount of people who watch the Woolworths or McDonald's of comedy is disappointing, so stop doing it. That would be my advice and do that with all your media and art forms, consume something small.