PM to honour Kylie

The Australian Prime Minister who refuses to allow same-sex couples to marry will induct the country’s greatest gay icon into the ARIA Hall of Fame on Sunday.

Julia Gillard has been charged with bestowing the Australian music honour on Kylie Minogue, who is poised to celebrate 25 years in the music industry.

Minogue will be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame alongside global children’s music group The Wiggles.

Minogue, who has twice performed at the Sydney Gay andLesbian Mardi Gras after-party, has long been a vocal supporter of equal rights for the LGBTI community, which has been at the core of her fanbase all her career.

Gillard has thus far stubbornly refused to change Australia’s Marriage Act which, thanks to John Howard, legally forbids marriage between same-sex couples.

Minogue is one of Australian music’s most enduring artists. It was back It was back in July 1987 that she released her first single, a remake of the 1962 Little Eva hit Locomotion, which went on to win Kylie her very first ARIA Award in 1988.

Since then, Minogue has been nominated 35 times and gone on to win nine ARIA Awards and three Outstanding Achievement Awards.

Since 1987, Minogue has released 11 studio albums, two live CDs and eight live concert DVD’s (plus her Greatest Hits and the Ultimate Kylie double album and multiple video packages), starred in movies and on our television screens and put on some of the most spectacular concert tours the world has seen.

As well as undertaking one of the most extensive tours of her career, 2011 also saw Kylie release her ninth perfume Dazzling Darling and release another best selling range of linens, candles, diffusers and towels from her Kylie Minogue at Home brand of homewares.

Minogue will be inducted alongside children’s group The Wiggles.

Founding members of The Wiggles, Anthony Field (blue), Murray Cook (red) and Greg Page (yellow), met while studying Early Childhood Education at Sydney’s Macquarie University. Anthony had an idea to record an album of children’s music, as he thought it might help him get a job as a teacher.

He enlisted the assistance of Murray and Greg, as well as Jeff Fatt, who played with Anthony in the popular 1980s band The Cockroaches, and The Wiggles were born. The Wiggles took the finished tape to ABC Music, who released a self-titled album in 1991 and things wiggled from there! In 2006, yellow Wiggle Greg Page stepped down due to illness and was replaced by Sam Moran who had been his understudy on more than 150 occasions.

The university training The Wiggles share continues to influence the band’s approach to their shows, albums and movies. From the very beginning, The Wiggles were judged by the most discerning critics of all – the kids themselves – and proved to be on the right track.

An enormous, global fan base now snaps up tickets within minutes of them going on sale and their extraordinary tickets sales rival the biggest acts in the entertainment industry.

Their achievements are history making. In 2003, The Wiggles performed 12 sold out shows at Madison Square Garden, New York. In 2005, a multi-million dollar amusement park, Wiggles World, opened at Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, with more Wiggles Worlds following in the United States at six destinations in the Six Flags Theme Park Group.

Other members of the ARIA Hall of Fame includes bona fide music legends such as AC/DC, Dame Joan Sutherland, Olivia Newton John, Johnny O’Keefe, Paul Kelly, John Farnham, INXS, Slim Dusty, Jimmy Little and many more.

info: The 2011 ARIA Awards will be screened on GO! from 7.30pm on Sunday, November 27. The DVD, Blu-Ray and CD of Minogue’s last concert, Aphrodite Les Folies, is released today through Warner Music.