Greens Float The Idea Of Paying Unemployed Artists An Actual Living Wage

Now, before we begin here we need to point out that there’s absolutely no way to distill this policy decision down into a clickable headline that *doesn’t* make the hairs on the backs of non-Green voters’ necks stand on end. But before those of you so inclined get out the ole’ welfare bludger bludgeon, it should be stated that this policy promise is, at the very least, an interesting one.
Greens arts spokesman and Member for Melbourne Adam Bandt has revealed a pretty radical policy promise that would see young, emerging, or underemployed artists paid a living wage whilst they pursue their craft.
Bandt and the Greens revealed the policy today, whilst speaking at a National Arts Debate at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre. The policy, the Greens state, is borne of a desire to see “a career in the arts [being] as valuable and viable as a career in any other sector.”
What they’re proposing, at least going by their own numbers, is a loosening of the Centrelink system to allow for artistic work done on an unpaid or freelance basis to count towards the mutual obligation requirements for Austudy or Newstart.

“Given the insecure nature of employment in the arts, many artists will at one point or another in their career find themselves unemployed and in need of income support. During these times, work done to perfect their craft will increase employability in the future, but it currently goes unrecognised by the social security system. Furthermore, the requirement to spend time complying with extensive Centrelink mutual obligation requirements leaves less time to develop skills.”


“The Greens will allow artistic activities that provide
community benefit to be eligible for Centrelink mutual
obligation requirements. The Parliamentary Budget Office
estimates the cost to be $51 million over four years.”


That, if used effectively and policed with a degree of rigidity on a case-by-case basis, could well be invaluable for people committed to a career in the arts. The process of job hunting set out by Centrelink is, as it stands, rather soul-sucking and time-consuming, and can often steal hours that might otherwise have been used to produce unpaid work or further skills not recognised by the job-seeking system.

The extended arts policy also includes a number of new provisions, including subsidies for the hefty expenses incurred by materials and exhibitions for artists operating as more-or-less a sole trading small business, boosting superannuation payments for career artists, reinstating the funding to the arts cut by the Coalition as well as providing an extra $270.2million in funding, and establishing an artist-in-residence program at Parliament House at a cost of $1million annually.
The policy document, which can be read in full here, has (much like most other political promises) its strengths and weaknesses. The screening process for who or what constitutes an “artist” in the eyes of Centrelink, for example, is one that would require severe scrutiny should the policy actually come to fruition. And the subjectivity of art would foreseeably stand at odds with the need to bureaucratically define what work qualifies as a mutual obligation requirement, or what actually constitutes “providing community benefit.”
However, like most other pre-election policy announcements, that’s clearly a matter for if (or when) it gets the go-ahead.
Instead we’ve all just gotta take the dang thing on face value and see if it has any merit. And after suffering through the ignobility of a Coalition Government who time and again made it perfectly clear that the arts were never a priority for them, “no” isn’t a word that springs to mind.
ELECTION TIME. HOW BLOODY ABOUT IT.

Source: The Greens.
Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty.

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