As we head towards the next Federal Election on Saturday 3 May 2025 lots of things are on the agenda – the dual cost of living and housing affordability crises, health, childcare, climate and energy, taxation and more. One thing we haven’t heard much about in the campaign trail (so far at least) is the arts. This and the next two listings cover what we have heard about the arts in the election.

Labor

While the arts is not specifically listed in Labor’s Plan, federal Arts Minister Tony Burke did talk to Daniel Browning on Arts in 30 on ABC Radio National about Labor’s arts policy and what the National Cultural Policy, Revive, would look like under a second Labor term. Tony reinforced why arm’s length decision-making in the arts is important and why government should stay out of making decisions about artistic merit. He said, “… there will always be criticisms of those decisions [about artistic merit], but [government] shouldn’t get involved in that.”

Burke also stated that government “needs to know [its] place”. Burke said “there is a national interest in having a strong arts sector” which drives economic and cultural benefits for the country. Being arm’s length means, as he sees it, government’s role is to set arts policy and support that so artists are “… on a stage that’s a bit higher, they’re a little bit more amplified, the spotlight’s a bit brighter”. Government’s role is to help the arts sector steer through opportunities and challenges.

In terms of the upcoming election, Burke make it clear cultural policy is still on the agenda. He expressed that Revive was intentionally set for five years only and that “… during the next term and almost straight away after the election, if we’re returned, we start the consultation for the next cultural policy”. In the interview, Burke confirmed that he didn’t want to “pretend that [Labor is] going to the election with a policy to establishing [a Living Wage for Artists], because we’re not”.

Content quotas for streaming services remains on the agenda for Labor. It was in Revive but was slower to be enacted that Burke wanted because consultation with streaming companies and the complexities of considering content quotas in the context of the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (in both the Biden and Trump administrations) have slowed down progress. We know, of course, that the streaming companies are also putting pressure on the Trump administration to reduce what they see as a “thicket” of “discriminatory” foreign regulation impacting US technology companies. Even so, Burke still wants Australian stories on Australian screens.

Cancellations of live music gigs and music festivals was also mentioned, with Burke flagging that these types of experiences typically take a hit when households are experiencing high cost of living pressures. When asked about the government underwriting high insurance costs for music festivals, Burke said it was more important for government to work with festival promoters and the insurance industry to “help change the risk profile that then reduces the insurance fee”.

Foreshadowed by the revelation that Meta used LibGen pirated books to train its AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → models and the subsequence response from authors and literary organisations, Browning also asked Burke about the government’s AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → regulation direction. Burke recognised that AI policy is being led by Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic and that responses are occurring internationally. ⟨ Of course, there is also work in this area being led by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and the Attorney-General’s Department through the Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Reference Group ⟩ Specifically in relation to authors and AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  →, Burke pointed to the 1 July start of Writing Australia as part of Revive, saying the establishment of that body was deliberate to ensure money for and cultural advice about writing, literature and publishing which has been underfunded.

In summary, any future Labor government will build off Revive, ensuring funding for an arm’s length funding body and a continued commitment to artform bodies such as Music Australia and Writing Australia. They will also seek to introduce local content quotas for streaming media and ensure artists are considered in AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → regulation.For a more complete list of arts peak body responses to the Budget, see the links below.

Creative Australia, local quotas, and AI theft: Tony Burke revives Labor’s arts policy

Daniel Browning – Wednesday 2 April 2025

Arts in 30, ABC Radio National, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

More to read on the things mentioned in this listing:

AI (artificial intelligence) ⌇ Australian Federal Election 2025 ⌇ Australian politics ⌇ Creative Australia ⌇ Creative workforce ⌇ Cultural policies ⌇ Government arts funding ⌇ Live music ⌇ Music streaming ⌇ Performing arts ⌇ Regulating AI ⌇ Working conditions in the arts ⌇ Writing & literature

The Liberals

I haven’t seen or heard much about where the arts sits in a potential Dutton Coalition government. All I can say is that in the Liberal Plan to ‘get Australia back on track’ the arts is mentioned broadly, with the plan saying a Dutton Coalition government will, “[support] the arts and Australian cultural, sporting and recreational pursuits to foster and enhance community wellbeing”. It’s not very descriptive. And it’s the 104th point on the list. In the episode of Arts in 30 Style: italics that Burke spoke on, Daniel Browning also mentioned that an invitation has been extended to opposition arts spokesperson Claire Chandler to be on the program. I wil include it in a future round-up if that happens.

The Greens

Onto the Greens: the arts is also not specifically listed in The Greens Plan, but back in early March, Greens’ spokesperson for the Arts Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was interviewed by Browning on a different episode of Arts in 30 about The Green’s arts policy for the election. (It was the same episode that gallerist Josh Milani, who represents Khaled Sabsabi, spoke on.) They announced their arts policy back in late Febraury.

On the show, Hanson-Young called for “cleaning up” Creative Australia by removing Adrian Collette as CEO and spilling the Board. Despite her concerns of indirect political interference in the Venice Biennale decision and that it demonstrates “culture being cancelled” (because the decision was seemingly revoked because of questions about Sabsabi’s prior artwork at Senate Estimates), Hanson-Young stated the importance of arm’s length decision-making by the federal arts funding body.

Like Labor, Local content quotas on streaming services is also on The Greens’ arts agenda. Hanson-Young took the opportunity to take a dig at the government for not getting it done even though it was listed in the National Cultural Policy. The Greens vision for a quota is 20 percent of profits generated in Australia by streaming services reinvested in Australian screen storytelling.

The Green’s response to pressures on the live performance sector was deflected to the larger policy objectives of investing $2 billion in a sustainability fund over a decade and a $300 million Arts Capital Works Fund to upgrade and expand arts infrastructure. She also mentioned the potential of a live performance offset similar to the producer offset for eligible Australian screen projects.

Hanson-Young also talked about The Greens’ Living Wage for Artists pilot program for up to 10,000 artists – an idea we know is not on the table for Labor. Hanson-Young also spoke to the value of the arts, economically and socially, and why protecting artistic freedom is fundamental to that. A minimum performance fee for musicians and live performers at publicly funded events and artists in residences in all public schools and public libraries are Also in The Greens’ policy but not specifically mentioned by Hanson-Young.

Browning asked Hanson-Young about how The Greens would make the policy real post-Election. Hanson-Young said, the policy is fully costed and has been submitted through the Parliamentary Budget Office. She also said, while “you never get everything you want”, having ideas on the table gives The Greens an opportunity in a minority government to negotiate to make them happen.

The other parties

In terms of the other parties, I am not aware of any specific arts policies from The Nationals, One Nation, Katter’s Australian Party, Trumpet of Patriots or Australia’s Voice.

What’s worth reading on the 2025 QMAs:

Creative Australia, local quotas, and AI theft: Tony Burke revives Labor’s arts policy

Daniel Browning – Wednesday 2 April 2025

Arts in 30, ABC Radio National, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Greens launch plan to save the arts amid crisis for creatives in Australia

Friday 28 February 2025

The Greens

More to read on the things mentioned in this listing:

Australian Federal Election 2025 ⌇ Australian politics ⌇ Creative Australia ⌇ Creative workforce ⌇ Cultural policies ⌇ Government arts funding ⌇ Live music ⌇ Music streaming ⌇ Performing arts ⌇ Working conditions in the arts

On top of the arts policy commitments from the political parties, some industry associations in the arts have come out with their own agendas for the election. Here’s some of them:

The arts generally

Theatre Network Australia

TNA (Theatre Network Australia) has released a guide for voters to canvas their representatives directly on arts issues this election. Along side this, they have outlined three key election outcomes and specific actions they would like to see, including:

• ensuring government and philanthropic grant income is exempt from income tax for independent creators (sole traders)
• extending Public Benevolent Institution (PBI) status to more arts organisations, enabling them to provide more competitive salary packages
• increasing funding available through Playing Australia to counter increasing touring costs and ensure regional and remote communities continue to benefit from access to high-quality performing arts experiences
• greater support for access to the arts for children and young people, including schools-based initiatives and the re-establishment of the ArtStart program for creative arts graduates for career or business development.

These are taken up in much more detail in TNA’s Federal 2025-26 Budget Recommendations.

Save Our Arts

Independent coalition Save Our Arts are going into the election campaign with ten key asks:

• a 25 percent content quota on streaming services and broadcasters, with a requirement to pay into a levy for arts and cultural funding if they do not meet the quota
• an Australian content marker (a ‘Koala Stamp’) that increased Australian’s exposure to Australian content on streaming services
• $100,000 Creative Fellowships awarded to 200 established, mid-career and emerging artists
• the producer offset extended to other parts of the arts and an insurance fund to help manage insurance costs for live music and performance
• AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → regulation that protects creators and copyright
• the establishment of a Cultural Infrastructure Fund investing $5 billion over a decade, with a focus on regional and remote Australia
• increase the Translation Fund for Literature
• arts vouchers given to  young Australians to help them purchase Australian books, music and art
• that arts funding remains arms’ length
• the ABC is independent and properly funded.

Save Our Arts held a forum at Readings Hawthorn focused on AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  →, global publishing and streaming and their impact on Australian literature. They also received statements on arts policy from Arts Minister Tony Burke, Shadow Arts Minister Senator Claire Chandler and Member for Kooyong, Dr Monique Ryan. Save Our Arts is the successor to Fund the Arts which ran during the lead up to the last federal election in 2022.

Community broadcasting

The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) has put out a “policy blueprint for all political parties and candidates contesting the 2025 Federal Election”. In response to increasing concentration and globalisation of media and support of independent and local media, particularly for regional areas and diverse communities, the CBAA is advocating for:

• secure and reliable ongoing funding for community broadcasters
• that funding is administered by an arm’s length, independent, sector-governed and transparent body
• additional funding to address misinformation and disinformation, increase community broadcasting’s role in local emergency broadcasting and to enable community broadcasters to better support local Australian music and the arts
• making regulation of community broadcasting more efficient Style: bullets

Music

APRA AMCOS (Australasian Performing Right Association Limited and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society) used their Budget response last week to also lay out their Election wishlist. In summary: they want all the parties to commit to a ‘Triple Lock Guarantee’ to grow Music Australia’s funding, to bring in local content quotas on music streaming services, the establishment of a music tax offset and AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → regulation that supports musicians.

Writing, literature and publishing

The founding literary organisations behind Books Create Australia and Australia Reads are urging candidates to “back books and reading” this election. The Australian Library and Information Association, the Australian Publishers Association, the Australian Society of Authors and BookPeople have issued a joint election push to:

• invest in a national reading strategy
• mandate school libraries and grow public library collections
• establish a Book Fund to publish more Australian works
• regulate AIAI is tech and marketing speak for a range of technology that imitates human intellect. Learn more  → to lessen the negative impacts on creators
• support Australian authors and Australian stories
• back local bookshops
• support the organisations and places that sustain our literary life.

2025 Federal Election Campaign Classes

March 2025

TNA

Christos Tsiolkas, Tim Winton and Charlotte Wood advocate to Save Our Arts ahead of federal election

Hannah Story – Monday 20 January 2025

ABC Arts and ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Safeguarding community voice in Australian media

Thursday 3 April 2025

Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA)

2025-26 Federal Budget Recommendations

March 2025

TNA

Budget backs Australian music – next Parliament must finish the job

Wednesday 26 March 2025

APRA AMCOS

Books Create Australia Election 2025

April 2025

Books Create Australia

More to read on the things mentioned in this listing:

AI (artificial intelligence) ⌇ Australian Federal Election 2025 ⌇ Australian politics ⌇ Creative Australia ⌇ Creative workforce ⌇ Cultural policies ⌇ Government arts funding ⌇ Live music ⌇ Music streaming ⌇ Performing arts ⌇ Regulating AI ⌇ Working conditions in the arts ⌇ Writing & literature

In the interview with ABC Radio National, Arts Minister Tony Burke also spoke about the ongoing Venice Biennale saga. He spoke about what happened, how that reflects on government’s role in the arts and the ongoing work of the funding body.

Burke clarified the sequence of events leading up to the decision by Creative Australia to rescind the contract for Khaled Sabsabi to represent Australia at the 2026 Venice Biennale. In particular, Burke’s phone call to Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette was to find out why the artworks identified in Senate Estimates were not included in the Ministerial briefing notes. During the call, Collette informed Burke that Creative Australia had already taken the steps to call the extraordinary meeting of the Australia Council Board.

Regardless of what comes out of the review of Creative Australia’s decision-making process for the 2026 Venice Biennale representation, Burke doubled down on the importance of the arts funding agency being arm’s length from government and the Minister. Burke said, it would be “ministerial interference” on artistic merit decisions for him to step in and remove Adrian Collette and the Australia Council Board. Likewise, he sees it as important the Minister does not “subsequently adjudicate” on decisions related to artistic merit.

By extension, Burke felt the Minister expressing support for, or not supporting, the reinstatement of Sabsabi isn’t appropriate given Creative Australia’s decisions should be arm’s length. That said, he did say at the begining of the interview that, “Khaled Sabsabi, I think, is extraordinary gifted and a great artist… Michael Dagostino, the curator, I’ve known for a lot of years, and I have seen him do brilliant work throughout Western Sydney during that time.”

Burke also spoke to the importance of artistic freedom, saying there is plenty of artwork that covers politics. Burke said, “There’ll be lots of artists out there who would regard their work as having nothing to do with politics, there’d be some who would regard their work as being political and that would suprise us, and there’s be some who regard [their artwork] as political and that would surprise no one”. For Burke, “The test, I think, should never be whether or not we agree with the political opinion of an artist.”

Burke recognised the impact the Venice Biennale decision was having on the sector, Creative Australia’s workforce and the funding body’s reputation. He cautioned that it would be a mistake to overlook all the other important work Creative Australia is doing.

If nothing else, it is refreshing to hear the Minister responsible for the arts portfolio echo back the values the sector sees as important for the government funding agency. Burke repetitiously reinforced the importance of arm’s length decision-making. Certainly, the same cannot be said for Donald Trump who continues to interfere with arts decision-making in America.

Creative Australia, local quotas, and AI theft: Tony Burke revives Labor’s arts policy

Daniel Browning – Wednesday 2 April 2025

Arts in 30, ABC Radio National, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

More to read on the things mentioned in this listing:

Arts & politics ⌇ Artistic freedom ⌇ Creative Australia ⌇ Government arts funding

In response to last week’s decision by Brisbane City Council to pull its funding for the Queensland Music Awards (QMAs) and QMusic’s statement responding to that decision over 2,000 signatories made up of “Queensland Music Awards nominated and winning artists and arts supporters” have signed a statement in support of Kelle Green.

The full statement is worth reading in full, but the crux of it is that Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner is attempting to suppress a dissenting voice by grossly mischaracterising Green’s ‘River to Sea’, which won the award “on the basis of its musical merit”, and claiming salaciously her speech was “vile hate speech” and promoted “antisemetism” and that the QMAs had been “hijacked by extremists”. The statement also notes that “conflating criticism of the actions of the Israeli government with antisemitism is misleading and inaccurate, and a denial of the voice and agency of the many Jewish people who do not condone violence against Palestinians”.

The signatories also challenge QMusic’s assertion that the QMAs are not a “platform for political debate”, saying they feel this “… undermines the long-standing role of artists as commentators and truth-tellers. Such a position risks curbing free speech under the guise of neutrality.” They express concern at the harrassment Green has been subjected to, including pressure for her employee to terminate her employment. The close out the statement saying:

“The notion that art should remain apolitical ignores the fundamental role culture plays in reflecting, questioning, and shaping society. Art is not created in a vacuum—it arises from lived experience, from collective memory, and from urgent social realities. Artists, like everyone else, are witnesses to the world around them, and many feel a moral obligation to respond.

To censor artists is to constrain not only individual expression but also the public’s capacity to think, feel, and imagine differently. Culture is one of the last shared spaces where complex ideas can be explored with nuance, empathy, and depth. Suppressing those spaces impoverishes our democracy, flattens discourse, and opens the door to authoritarianism. The silencing of artists must be recognised for what it is: a political act aimed at controlling meaning and limiting dissent.

We stand in unwavering solidarity with Kellee Green and commend the Queensland Music Awards for recognising River to Sea on the basis of its artistic excellence. We call on QMusic and the QMAs to hold the line against political interference, to unequivocally defend artistic freedom, and to reject attempts to weaponise funding as a tool of censorship. Rather than capitulate to pressure from the LNP-led Brisbane City Council, we urge them to seek alternative support—public, philanthropic, or community-based—that aligns with the values of creative integrity, inclusion, and free expression.”In response to the statement, QMusic issues a follow up that has all the passion and care that was missing from their initial statement. I won’t extract parts of the QMusic response – I just encourage you to read it.

What’s worth reading on the response to Kelle Green’s QMA win:

Response: QMusic Members

Wednesday 2 April 2025

QMusic

‘We Don’t Have All the Answers, But We Are Listening’: QMusic Responds to Queensland Music Awards Backlash

Lars Brandle – Wednesday 2 April 2025

Rolling Stone Australia

More to read on the things mentioned in this listing:

Artistic freedom ⌇ Arts & politics ⌇ Music news

After a period of consultation, the Government of South Australia has released its cultural policy – A Place to Create. It is “a 10-year cultural policy for all South Australians to enrich South Australia’s future through arts, culture and creativity” actioned by a series of short-term delivery plans. Along with the policy, Arts South Australia has been renamed and rebranded CreateSA and consultation has opened on a proposed piece of legislation to “enshrine how the arts are valued and led in South Australia”.

The policy sets some high ambitions. It has a strong focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and culture and it want’s young people, people with disability and regional South Australian’s to participate in the arts more. SA is home to “world-class artists, cultural organisations and creative industries” that make “excellent and diverse art and culture” and to cultural heritage and collecting institutions central to understanding the world and SA stories. The policy also positions the arts as leaders in “climate action and achieving net zero targets”.A number of organisations have come out in support of the South Australian policy, including NAVA, APRA AMCOS and MusicSA.

What’s worth reading on South Australia’s new cultural policy:

A Place to Create

Monday 31 March 2025

Government of South Australia

Inside South Australia’s new 10-year cultural policy

Gina Fairley – Sunday 1 April 2025

ArtsHub

More to read on the things mentioned in this listing:

Cultural policies