Martin Phillipson is an Adelaide-based trumpeter who plays with major orchestras and was recently part of the Australian World Orchestra in Sydney. He’s not only passionate about playing trumpet at the highest level, he’s also passionate about the teaching of music. When he realised that his primary-aged kids weren’t getting access to instrumental teaching at his local state primary school in Adelaide, rather than whinge about it at a dinner party he decided to actually do something. He started a charity organisation called Instruments of Change, which subsidised lessons and provided loan instruments and donated keyboards and drums. There were a staff of seven teachers who taught during school hours and at one stage they had over 100 kids enrolled with plans to roll out to other primary schools.

This was before the education union in South Australia, through the Industrial relations commission, decreed late last year that no private teachers would be allowed into schools unless every other union option was exhausted. This meant that programmes such as Martin’s would be effectively blocked from working within the very schools that needed them. South Australia does have an Instrumental Music Service to provide education to state schools, but they simply...