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[ Music ]
>> When I first decided to follow my passion for food
and begin working for Neil Perry
at his flagship Rockpool restaurant,
I had no formal qualifications in hospitality and catering.
One day I asked Neil, "Do you think I should go back to school
to get my commercial cookery certificate."
He promptly replied, "Kwong, you don't need
to go to cooking school.
Just learn on the job, stick with me
and read all the Alice Waters books.
[ Audience Laughing ]
Well, I did as I was told.
And the wisdom and inspiration I found between those covers,
including Alice's mantra of local, naturally-grown produce,
community, relationship, connexion, education,
and respect struck a very deep chord with me.
Throughout my childhood,
my mother embodied these same values and her love of cooking
and gathering around the table.
So, Alice's words really rang true for me and they continue
to inform all I do as a cook and a restaurateur.
At her own restaurant in California, Chez Panisse,
Alice pioneered the farm-to-table ethos,
championing locally-produced food
and small-scale sustainable agriculture.
And blazing a trail that changed the way we think about food.
I have been fortunate enough
to experience Chez Panisse several times
and I feel a deep connexion to the place
and what it represents.
I constantly dream of my next visit.
Tireless in her efforts to create a sustainable
and celebratory food culture,
Alice Waters' influence has been profound and far-reaching.
Her Edible Schoolyards programme has reclaimed all those paved
parking lots and turned them back into paradises.
With more than 2,000 Edible Schoolyards across the states
and beyond, she has taken her cause to the White House
where she worked with Michelle Obama
to plant an organic vegetable garden.
And now it seems, Alice has the Vatican
and the G20 leaders in her sights.
[ Applause ]
Called "The Fountain of Inspiration" by Carlo Petrini,
founder of the global Slow Food movement.
She's on a mission to teach us how to embrace
and instil slow food values in a fast food culture.
At the heart of her message is a human desire for connexion.
She encourages us to be a part of an inclusive, uplifting,
completely delicious, and very accessible life experience.
And that's why I believe her message continues to grow.
It is rooted in reality and humanitarian values.
Many of the leading chefs, cooks and slow food pioneers
in Australia have been inspired by her campaigning and writings,
and our burgeoning farmers markets
and educational kitchen gardens have grown form seeds planted
by her Delicious Revolution.
To have the mother of this revolution here
with us this evening is both an honour and a pleasure.
Please join me in welcoming Alice Waters to the stage.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you so much, Kylie, for that introduction,
even though it was a little exaggerated.
[laughs] Especially around the Pope.
[inaudible] But it's thrilling to finally be here in Australia
and to be speaking at this amazing Sydney Opera House.
I think it's one of the great buildings of the world and full
of hopefulness and energy of this country.
And I'm honoured to be the first speaker of this amazing series.
Even though it's not part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas
that I've heard so much about, I feel like I am part of that.
I'm going to be sharing some of my own dangerous ideas.
I've been invited to come to Australia
for probably 25 years and, for one reason or another,
I've never been able to find the right moment.
But earlier this year I realised that now was the moment.
For the past ten years, I've been focussed intently
on what is happening in the United States,
and to a lesser extent, what's happening in Europe.
However, I've come to realise
that we are pieces of the same puzzle.
An action in the United States has a reaction
in Brazil or in Mexico.
And the choices made in supermarkets
in London have a consequence in Kenya.
And decisions made in Beijing or Cabra have a global impact.
We're living in a truly globalised world.
Now, it was the French philosopher, Brillat-Savarin,
who said, "The fate of nations depends
on how they nourish themselves."
But if he lived at this moment,
I'm sure he would alter this idea to say,
"The fate of the planet depends on how we nourish each other."
When I heard that climate change was taken off the agenda
of the G8 in Brisbane, I must admit I was shocked.
Perhaps I was not paying attention.
I've always thought of Australia as a place
where the environment is so precious and the climate
so precarious, that you would be our natural leaders.
As a Californian and someone with relationships to hundreds
of farmers going to the worst drought imaginable,
I was alarmed that something so real and so urgent
as global warming could be put aside.
I know about the extraordinary ingenuity
of Australian permaculture.
I've known about it for many, many years.
And I figured that you might be able to help us figure out how
to feed ourselves in the future.
And it seems to me like the food industry in the United States,
that the mining industry here is doing the same thing.
They're pulling the wool over our eyes.
This means that Australia is playing an outside --
sized roll in destabilising the climate
and making agriculture increasingly impossible,
not only here, but all around the world.
But I know I have many kindred spirits here,
and I meet wonderful Australians around the world who are engaged
with the ideas that I hold so dear.
And there are people in film, like Peter Weir
and Warwick Thornton, and actors
like Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman.
And he actually -- Hugh Jackman just recently came
to the Edible Schoolyard in Berkley.
Amazing. And they're our friends, of course.
Like Kylie and Maggie Beer, and Skye in London, and Neil Perry.
And new friends like Sean Morant.
And, fortunately David Prior, my brilliant collaborator
and food writer introduced me to Stephanie Alexander.
And I regard her as a powerful ally in edible education
and whose vital work with the Kitchen Garden Foundation must
continue to be supported by politicians.
Or --
[ Applause ]
Or David said that we'll have to confiscate their copies
of The Cook's Companion.
[ Laugh ]
Well, what I want to talk to you tonight about is something
that I've been talking a lot about lately,
in lots of different places
around the country and around the world.
And, though it's not about food and cooking in the usual way,
it's really about them in a larger sense.
I think we can all agree that we face serious issues.
Obesity, diabetes, addiction, depression, pesticide use,
GMO foods, the economy, land use, water use,
fare wages for workers, violence, terrorism,
poverty, and childhood hunger.
The over-arching fear of climate change and the list goes on.
It's overwhelming.
In my opinion, all these dreadful issues we face --
and they are dreadful -- each and every one of them,
all of these issues are really outgrowths of a bigger,
more encompassing thing.
They're consequences of a much more fundamental
and deeply-rooted condition.
One that provides the soil, if you will,
for all the other issues to grow out of.
And by not addressing this deeper, larger,
pervasive condition -- what we're trying to do with all
of our well-intentioned attempts to solve the problems is merely
to treat the symptoms of a diseases without dealing
with the root causes of the disease itself.
And unless we deal with the deeper, more insidious,
systemic condition, all
of our other problem won't really go away.
They'll just come back like weeds that you pulled
from the garden one year and then they're there the next.
So, what is this deep, systemic condition?
The author Eric Schlosser, one of my personal heroes and one
of the great [inaudible] of our times, has pointed out that
in the United States, we live in fast food nation.
Fast food is, sad to say,