- The Guardian
- Issue #2190
The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) says it is aware of a recent ABC report which exposed ‘Aussie Gigs’ as a sham booking agency that has been defrauding gigging musicians.
The report has uncovered allegations that the booking agency withheld thousands of dollars’ worth of performance fees owed to musicians they had engaged.
Unfortunately, incidents like this are not isolated but reflect systemic issues across the industry.
“Musicians should not have to fight to be paid for their work and members are calling for significant reform to an industry that has long been unregulated,” the union’s Musicians Director Paul Davies said.
“MEAA’s most recent survey of musicians has revealed that more than half are earning less than $15,000 a year in an industry where non-payment, underpayment, and broken contracts are rife.
“Predatory practices like this are reflective of the power imbalance between music businesses and working musicians. Exploitation in the music industry is enabled by a lack of minimum standards and protections.”
Davies said this latest incident reinforces the urgent need for industry-wide reform to lift standards and protect musicians.
This is why MEAA members have been demanding serious change in the music industry – by working collectively to establish an industry code of conduct and minimum standards like the musicians’ minimum fee.
“We want to work with the music industry to set minimum standards that will allow for a safer, more sustainable and more rewarding music industry.”
The Australian Human Rights Commission’s Commissioners for First Peoples’ rights, children and racism are calling on all Australian governments to address racism in Australia’s criminal justice system, following a United Nations urgent warning about the treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed “grave concerns” about the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the criminal justice system and the use of harsh adult penalties on children as young as 10 years old.
The Committee identified racial profiling and over-policing as factors leading to higher incarceration rates. They noted that Indigenous children in Australia make up around 65% of those in detention despite being only 6.5% of the child population. Most of these children have not even been convicted of a crime and are being held on remand. It also raised grave concerns about the harsh conditions First Nations children face in detention including “solitary confinement for prolonged duration, ill-treatment, and the use of spit-hoods.”
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Katie Kiss; National Children’s Commissioner, Deb Tsorbaris and Race Discrimination Commissioner, Giridharan Sivaraman have called for all Australian governments to urgently respond to the Committee’s recommendations and implement the recommendations of the “Help Way Earlier” report. They’ve also called on Australian governments to endorse the National Anti-Racism Framework and implement the recommendations for the Justice sector.
PARASITE OF THE WEEK: is the US and Israel. They are as one, as in response to Francesca Albanese’s book When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds which is a testimony of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. As a result of her fearless truth-telling about Palestine, Albanese – the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories – is banned from entering the US, where her assets have been frozen, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cynically claiming that Albanese “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West.” The sanctions also apply to her daughter and husband.
