Greens promise insurance scheme for Australian music industry

The music industry has been struggling since the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting calls for an insurance scheme to keep the industry afloat despite a difficult market. With the elections coming up, the Australian Greens (Greens) party unveiled policies to help the industry if it wins.

Greens party leader Adam Bandt and arts spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young recently spoke at the Comedy Republic in Melbourne to reveal the party’s plans for the music industry, including establishing a new $1 billion Live Performance Fund to help festival and event sectors, and delivering a Life Performance Insurance Guarantee.

“(It) will help artists and performers hit with COVID-related cancellations … for too long performers have been expected to wear massive financial risks,” Bandt said, as reported by The Music Network.

Read more: Is insurance capacity returning to the live events market?

The party also promises to further help the music industry by:

Backing the Media, Entertainment, and Arts Alliance’s (MEAA) calls for a $250 minimum fee for musicians, comedians, buskers, and other performers when playing publicly funded events. The campaign has been run through the MEAA Musicians division representing freelance musicians and endorsed by state governments in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, and South Australia;
Setting up a multi-disciplinary creativity commission with an annual $10 million fund; and
Pushing for additional grant funding for COVID-19 recovery through the RISE Fund.

“For the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Greens [have] been advocating for better support for our arts and live performance sector,” Senator Hanson-Young said, as reported by The Music Network. “The sector was smashed literally overnight and suffered the longest and hardest, yet repeated pleas to the Morrison government for adequate help to survive and rebuild have been ignored.

The insurance and music industries have been calling for an insurance scheme to help companies and performers survive amid the pandemic and other challenges. In early 2022, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) explained that insurance coverage schemes for pandemic-induced losses will only be possible with government help.