You may have forgotten the name but you probably know Ewen Jones as the Australian politician who has even better music taste than you do. A fan of Tame Impala and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, it’s safe to say he’s something of an outlier when it comes to MP music taste.
Well, he just got even cooler in our books (despite being a member of the Liberal party). As ABC News reports, Jones recently tapped Jimmy Barnes to help lobby parliament to do more for those struggling to earn a dollar in today’s music industry.
Barnesy was joined by Josh Pyke and Baby Animals frontwoman Suze DeMarchi to perform a set in the parliamentary courtyard last night. The aim of the show was to bring the industry’s hardships into the consciousness of those forging federal policy.
“Musicians struggle for most of their careers,” Barnes told the audience of politicians and industry members. “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.”
Interestingly, Jones suggested taking music out of the purview of the arts sector and instead having it fall under the category of innovation and small business, citing the value of the Australian music industry at $15 billion a year.
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Jones co-organised the event on behalf of the Parliamentary Friends of Australian Music. “This is the people’s music being played in the people’s house,” he said. “We want to take this art form out of the arts portfolio and put it into the innovation and small business portfolios.”
According to Jones, whilst music can be a lucrative pursuit for some, the majority of artists make less than $10,000 a year. “We have to do better than that. You won’t find a more creative, a more innovative industry than music. This is perfect for our agenda,” he said.
“You can have a top 10 single in the world from Townsville, or Cairns or Alice Springs if you know how to do it. This is not just people playing music, it’s about technology, it’s about graphic design, it’s about record production, it’s about everything. This is a hugely exciting time.”
