Many arts workers have insecure work and unreliable pay, so how does the Federal Labor Government’s Tony Burke, sworn in a month ago as both Arts Minister and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, intend to improve their lot?
“We talk about the gig economy as though it is a brand-new technology,” Burke tells Limelight. “The truth is arts workers have been working in a gig economy for a century.”
“There are some areas where job security is really difficult to be able to fix for arts workers, particularly for independent artists, [but] there are other areas where we can find a better path to job security than what we’ve had.”
Tony Burke
Meanwhile, Burke, who previously held the Arts portfolio for six months in 2013 under former Labor prime ministers Julia Gillard and then Kevin Rudd, remains “alive to the fact that the Australia Council remains underfunded”, having “still not recovered” from deep cuts made by his successor George Brandis, who was the Coalition’s Arts Minister from 2013 to 2015.
On 1 July, the submissions website for the government’s bourgeoning cultural policy goes live – arts.gov.au/culturalpolicy...
I believe that any arts/cultural policy is better than none. But, as an arts worker, I have the opportunity to help build the best policy that we can. I encourage all arts lovers and those of us in the arts to contribute to this policy that can make all our lives better while putting the arts centre stage in the Australian vernacular.