The global financial meltdown and impending economic Armageddon may have an unexpected upside.  For the first time in half a generation, there may finally be a pool of people with the time on their hands necessary to build exciting Parade floats.

Once upon a time, when the Pride Parade was cool and new, scores of our gay and lesbian creative types spent hour upon hour dreaming up and bringing to reality float after fabulous float for our biggest night of the year.

Working in collaboration and competition, our brightest talents stitched and superglued their way to creative immortality, supported in unison by legions of performers and their commanding choreographers.

And their creations were not only captivating - they were clever.  Complete with irreverent and humourous interpretations of the world around us - satirical send ups of everyone and everything.

Sure, the John Howards and Pauline Hansons of the world gave plenty to work with, but there is always something to laugh at it you have the people with the skills to point out the funny side.

And this has been the problem with the Pride Parade, and Sydney's Mardi Gras Parade for that matter, in recent times - the absence of the people with the time and skills to tell the story.

While it certainly wasn't the only factor at play, it is probably no coincidence that the Pride Parade was born in a time in which Australia was suffering a chronic recession and more than 11 per cent of working age Australians couldn't find work

And while it definitely isn't the only factor either, it is probably no coincidence that the long term decline in Pride Parade content has occurred over the period that our local economy recovered from the economic downturn in 2000-01 - during the crazy mining industry led economic boom of the last six years.

Over this time, the unemployment rate dropped from more than 7 per cent to just over 3 per cent.  Put simply, almost everybody who wants work in Western Australia can now find work... and, in many cases, we find more work than we really want.

It has actually been possible to earn $100,000 a year making jelly in Western Australia over the last few years, depending on where you work.  No wonder there is nobody to make floats. 

But it is not just the artists we have lost to the workforce... it is almost everybody who formerly had time to volunteer for community groups.  Do you remember the time when people used to volunteer for community groups to get something on their CV they could cite when applying for real jobs?

Times long gone.  Can you remember the last time a community group you know had no vacancies on its Committee?

If you want a measure of how times have changed, Pride outsourced the staffing of Fairday this year to contractors.  There was a time when Pride had to turn away volunteers at Fairday.

During one of the years I was a member of the Pride Committee - 2004, I think - we sourced $20,000 in funding from Healthway and made four grants of $5,000 available for community groups to build creative floats with.  We sourced talented artists and gave them meaningful budgets to build really cool floats.  We figured that, if the artists had no time to volunteer for the Parade anymore, we would pay them to do it.

Problem was, we couldn't find four community groups with enough volunteers to help the artists make the floats.

Who said supply creates its own demand?  Probably the same people who said the regulation of financial markets should be left to the markets themselves - John McCain, for one - but that is another story.

So, as we approach another Pride Parade and stoically head down to Northbridge to support the cause, there is reason for us to be optimistic about the Parade's future.

While this year's Parade will still be a fun night, if you head down to Northbridge looking forward to seeing the float full of chair sniffers and top lifters, the float featuring Sarah Palin riding a huge antlered moose - bareback, or the Margaret Court versus Lisa Scaffidi professional wrestling float, you are probably going to be disappointed.

Such floats would have been certain starters if 2008 had happened in 1998, but not now.

However, with the global financial meltdown promising to throw all of us out of work in the years ahead, the Pride Parade may well experience a renaissance to outdo Colin Barnett's recent reincarnation.

Here's to our papier-mâché led recovery!  I am happy to paint.

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