"He convinced me that if we're going to have honest government that you can't leave it up to the crooks and that honest people have to get involved in government. So I did. I got involved as a criminal prosecutor with the U. S. Justice Department." -- Bill Scott
William Neville "Bill" Scott OAM (4 October 1923 – 22 December 2005) was an Australian author, folklorist, songwriter, poet and a collector of bush ballads and Australian folk history. He has published anthologies of Australian bush songs, including the best selling book The Complete Book of Australian Folklore published in 1976. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 1992 for his contributions to folklore, folk music and Australian literature. He was considered a living treasure and his anthologies of songs and his donated collections continue his legacy.
"He has a very extensive public relations apparatus that is paid for by the taxpayers of this state. They are some of the best in the business. and he is a master at getting not only television but other media exposure on the basis of confrontation and chaos.""He seems to want confrontation not only with the legislature and with the other elected officials, but he wants constant confrontation in order to be center stage on the television screen.""I think it is wrong to spend $4 or $5 million in a campaign.""I think we're probably more unified than ever before because we're in a battle for survival. Not only for survival as the Republican Party, but survival of the check and balance system in our government.""I was concerned about the link between crime and politics, and I figured out the only way I could do something about it was to get into politics.""It is essential that there should not only be a limit on campaign spending but it should be required to say where that money is spent and how it is spent. I think there has been more abuse in campaign spending, actually, than in campaign contributors.""It's kind of hard to spend long hours trying to help people and then find out that the favorite game of the columnist is to sit back and second guess you and try to find something that you did wrong.""Literally every department of state government has gone through, or is in a period of, chaos. Not just fiscal chaos, but certainly as we saw in the Department of Children and Family Services and State Fair Agency and many of Walker's departments, there is absolute chaos.""My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.""No, I was pleased that it is possible for somebody who makes full disclosure as I've done, not only of the contributors, but also how the money is spent.""There's no question that any of us who are doing an honest job in government could do a lot better in private industry. During the years I was practicing law as an individual, my salary was a great deal more than it is now.""We aren't going to agree on everything and there will be other areas where we will be working together.""We're involved right now in some very significant legal battles and it would be the wrong thing for me to do to step out in the middle of those battles.""Well, I think that those of us in public life that are trying to do a good job, and that are faced with this popular new game that the media has of being critical of everything that anybody in public office does probably are thin-skinned.""Whether or not we can save Lake Michigan, whether or not we can avoid a breakdown in our criminal justice system are more important than whether or not I'm going to be governor."
Bill Scott was born in Bundaberg, Queensland and grew up in Caboolture and Brisbane. He began writing poetry while serving in the Royal Australian Navy during World War II, and had his first poem published in The Bulletin in 1944 when he was twenty-one.
After the war he traveled around Queensland working as a sugar cane cutter, umbrella maker, steam engine driver, and gold-prospector. He was also a worker in the smelters of Mount Isa, and a seaman on a lighthouse tender in the 1950s before working at a publishing house.
Starting in 1974 he wrote full-time. In 1976 he compiled The Complete Book of Australian Folklore, a book that has been in print almost continuously ever since. He also edited and compiled "The Second Penguin Australian Songbook". Scott completed 51 books of prose and poetry, and is renowned as a collector and writer of Australian folk stories and songs. He also wrote novels, short stories, verse, biographies, magazine articles, anthologies and songs, with some of his poetry and short stories anthologised in various collections.
Late in life he moved from Brisbane to Warwick in the Darling Downs, where he spent his last 18 years of life. He wrote long letters "full of stories, news, ideas and weather reports from his beloved Condamine River". He shared little gifts, tapes, books and even a rock of smoky quartz from the Snowy Mountains, as a reminder of his prospecting days, with friends.
Many of his poems are well known and recited by school children. Scott was also a founding member of the Queensland Folk Federation that now runs the Woodford Folk Festival. Ian McNamara of ABC Radio said, "We as people are all better off for the muse of a bloke like Bill."
His song Hey Rain was used as the namesake for the documentary on his 50 year "folkie" career, with the subtitle The songs and stories of Bill Scott. The documentary has been featured on ABC's Sunday afternoon program. ABC's description of the show notes, "Continuing the tradition of Australian bush poets like Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson is... Bill Scott. A popular performer at the Woodford Folk Festival over the years where most of this documentary is set, this is an affectionate look at a charming man with a lot of great memories." The documentary's liner notes say, "He's a story teller, he's Bill Scott, and this is his song".
An obituary in Folklore suggested the refrain of his poem "The Old Man's Song" as an epitaph: "What good is your life if it isn't a song?"
First broadcast on the ABC in 2005, Hey Rain is a documentary that celebrates the life and works of Bill Scott. "It looks at Bill's lifelong fascination with Australian folklore and the role he played in collecting it, loving it and bringing it to an ever widening audience. (It) touches on Bill's poems, stories and songs and contains performances by Dave de Hugard, Penny Davies and Roger Ilott, and it also features a song dedicated to Bill by that extraordinary performer, Ted Egan."
