Jimmy Barnes Slammed Lockout Laws Outside Parliament House Last Night

Last night, Australian rock legend Jimmy Barnes headlined a performance for politicians and staffers outside Parliament House, as part of a push by government backbencher Ewen Jones to get his colleagues focussing on the music industry.



He and a bunch of other Aussie musicians – including Josh Pyke, Paul Dempsey, Baby Animals front-woman Suze DeMarchi – performed at the bequest of Jones on behalf of the Parliamentary Friends of Australian Music.

“Musicians struggle for most of their careers,” Barnes said, after performing an A+ acoustic version of his classic hit ‘Flame Trees‘. “There needs to be more funding around the arts, for music, for rock music. I’ve seen a lot of great musicians, a lot of great songwriters, come and starve to death and disappear.”



Jones – the Federal Member for Herbet, Townsville – is pushing for music to be taken out of the arts portfolio, and put into the innovation and small business portfolios. He pointed out that while the top 2% of Australian artists make $200,000 a year in this $15-billion-a-year industry, 78% of artists make less than $10k a year.

“We have to do better than that,” he said. “You won’t find a more creative, more innovating industry than music. This is perfect for our agenda.”

As well as pointing out that you could have a top 10 single in the world from any remote part of Australia, if you’ve got the technology in place to do it, both Jones and Barnes spoke out against Sydney‘s lockout laws as killing the live music scene and hurting the music industry as a whole.

“The live music industry needs to be supported, the hotels association needs to get behind us,” said Barnes. “We need politicians to help us with lockout laws, there’s got to be better ways with dealing with that, that don’t compromise live music.”

Jones also suggested the idea of holding a music festival on Capital Hill.

“I want to see it looking out towards the War Memorial, looking out down the drive with electric guitars,” he said. “My dream is to see Tim Rogers and You Am I, playing ‘Berlin Chair‘ at full throttle, because no one in the world attacks a guitar like an Australian.”

Wild.

Photo: James Doherty / Twitter.
Source: ABC / BuzzFeed News.

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