As the 2022 election enters its final days, the lack of arts policies on offer from either the Morrison government or the Labor Party is a huge cause for concern for the sector.

With COVID still raging around the country (despite governments of all stripes doing their best to never mention it), arts companies are struggling to make ends meet as lockdown-era stimulus is wound up but audiences remain reluctant to return to live performance in their pre-pandemic numbers.

With so many companies still on a knife’s edge, and so many independent and freelance artists still doing it incredibly tough, the near-total silence on the arts from both major parties is frankly pathetic for an industry that is worth $112 billion a year to the Australian economy and employs around 600,000 people.

Limelight has approached the Coalition, Labor and the Greens and invited them to write about their arts policies: to date only Federal Arts Minister Paul Fletcher has taken us up on the offer, with an op-ed spruiking the government’s support for the sector over the past two years but offering very little for the future. Indeed Limelight’s analysis of the 2022 Federal Budget reveals almost 25 percent of...