Comment on Australia in danger of becoming an ‘artless country’ as enrolments in creative courses collapse
shirro@aussie.zone 3 days ago
Being a starving artist living on the safety net is more difficult with cost of living increases.
Lots of good music came from countries like England, Sweden, Australia which were reasonably wealthy and had some minimum level of social welfare. We lost affordable tertiary education and it is one less place for people to meet and form bands or experiment.
And people who looking for creative careers are seeing management everywhere turn to AI slop while fees go up and looking elsewhere. Everyone is hoping to find work that can’t be outsourced, can’t be automated and will still be around in 20 years. The choices seem to be narrowing.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 2 days ago
Just one thing - student debt in Australia generally isn’t a problem like it is overseas. HECS/HELP repayments are a tiny percentage of your wage, and only kick in after you’re earning above a certain amount. Student debt would affect artists the least because the likely wouldn’t have to even repay it until they’re not struggling.
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Its the one thing i think the Albanese gov really wasted money on, that rebate. There are so many other important needs all those funds could have been directed towards.
If they still wanted a positive change to the hecs/help debt scheme they could’ve increased the rate the repayments kick in back to pre-Abbott levels. Accounting for cost of living increases, it mightn’t even be a controversial policy.
I speak as a beneficiary of the rebate. Surely the policy wasn’t that popular with hecs/help debt holders that it drove votes.