Greens’ arts spokesperson Adam Bandt will today announce a plan to support artists to “make a living and save for their retirement”.
The announcement comes as Bandt, the ALP’s shadow arts minister Mark Dreyfus and the Minister for the Arts, Senator Mitch Fifield meet today to debate arts policy at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre.
In what is no doubt the most adventurous idea to emerge so far from the previously announced arts policies of the Greens, the ALP and even the Arts Party, Bandt argues artists should be eligible for Centrelink payments to support them while they are in casual work or in between other paid work when they are providing benefits to the community through their art.
“Creative work with a public benefit should count towards Centrelink’s “mutual obligation” requirements,” Bandt said in a statement.
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“Working as an artist often means working in casual or insecure work, making it difficult for artists to save or plan for their retirement.The Greens value the role artists play in our cultural life and believe that artists should be paid to reflect the value that they add to our society,” he said.
“For people working in the arts and earning low-incomes, it is near impossible to save or even consider planning for their retirement. The Greens will boost the superannuation of artists earning low incomes to help make sure a life spent contributing to the creative industries doesn’t mean a retirement without a nest egg.”
In providing detail for the plan Bandt said the Greens would:
· Allow artistic activities that provide community benefit to be eligible for Centrelink mutual obligation requirements at a cost of $51 million over four years;
· Implement a new low-income artist superannuation supplement worth an additional $500 per year for working artists who meet the eligibility criteria for the Low Income Superannuation Tax Offset (LISTO) announced in the 2016-17 Budget, costing $23 million over four years;
· Establish an arts sector-led taskforce to advise about the opportunities and risks posed by the digitisation of distribution and consumption of creative works to ensure the continued creation of local artistic content; and
· Support artists’ incomes by investing $20 million over four years into a fund so that organisations can pay artists fees for works that are publicly displayed, loaned to a non-selling exhibition or used on other occasions when art is shared with the public (this measure has been previously announced).
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[box]Image: Greens’ arts spokesman Adam Bandt with Greens’ leader Richard di Natale. Photo via Flickr[/box]
