The Greens have announced a policy for a $700m boost to help live performances stay alive over the next four years.

Sarah Hanson-Young gave these key points to the policy:

• Live music venues – 10 per cent tax offsets for the costs of hosting live music 
• Touring artists– 50 per cent tax offset for travel expenses
• Theatre productions– 40 per cent tax offset for the costs of live theatre production (similar to screen producer offset).

Hanson-Young said someone needed to act to keep live music and theatre alive:

Art matters, live shows matter and our live music venues matter. Live music and theatre bring our cities and towns alive. Gigs, concerts and festivals inject money and enthusiasm into our local communities from the cities to the regions. 

This policy is good for small businesses and the hospitality and tourism industries as well as the artists and local performers we all love to watch and enjoy.   

Our live performance sector is struggling. Amidst ongoing cost of living pressures and piecemeal funding programs from the government, more and more venues are being forced to close their doors.

The Greens plan to introduce a Live Performance Tax Offset for venues, touring artists and theatre productions will boost our arts sector and provide a tax incentive for Aussie pubs and clubs to host local artists and provide the platform for emerging talent.”

The arts play a critical role in telling the stories of Australia and our people – we must do whatever we can to keep these venues open and support the rise of local creatives.”

Investing in live events and performance is an investment into our local communities, small businesses and our tourism industry. 

Send in your election questions to amy.remeikis@australiainstitute.org.au with ‘questions for blog’ in the subject line – if I can’t answer it, I will find someone who can

Sam has just asked me what seats the Coalition could lose.

And there are a few in the defend list the Coalition are worried about – but it doesn’t mean the seats are going to Labor.

Cowper and Wannon are facing very strong independent challenges.

Bradfield is considered a loss

The Liberals are fighting to retain Leichhardt, but think they will win back Ryan from the Greens

Gilmore is a potential win, as is Lyons, but Calare is still up in the air (the Nationals were including that in their win pile, but now are having to fight) and Monash is surprisingly still considered an open field.

Keep an eye on seats like McPherson on the Gold Coast – which is part of a two election strategy by community independents to turn that seat from Liberal heartland to independent and what happens to the LNP vote in Hinkler and Capricornia.

On the Coalition’s plans to scrape the vehicle efficiency standards, Anika Wells says:

The Coalition have had more backflips than Simone Biles in the energy space. It’s hard to keep up, to be honest. I say that as Sports Minister, I’m an expert in Simone Biles and her work.

What I hear on the ground about this is people are so sick of these ideological fights, this to me suggests that those people in the party room who aren’t happy with toeing a moderate line on this, starting to get anxious about it when actually when you knock on someone’s door all they want to know is there’s money coming off their power bills because they have got lots of bills that they’re worried about and that’s why the tangible, measurable steps of relief we have taken this term offer them more certainty and relief than anything the Coalition throws up here today or tomorrow.

Anika Wells is in Darwin with the prime minister because the announcement is in aged care (her ministry):

We’re announcing $60 million to build up to 120 new beds. Like you say, Darwin has the least amount of aged care beds in the country and this is my fourth trip here as the Aged Care Minister. I was just here a couple of weeks ago, a place called Pearl, supportive care, Jen told me she’s got a wait list of 100 people. I said to Jen we’re coming back with answers. We’re coming back with $60 million to build 120 new beds

The Australian has reported Peter Dutton was the target of an alleged terror plot, with a 16-year-old boy facing charges in the Supreme Court, after being arrested in August last year.

The child can not be named for legal reasons.

Labor minister Anika Wells is doing media this morning and she was asked about the story on ABC News Breakfast:

To the exact story you’re talking about obviously it’s before the courts so I can’t say too much about it but you would have seen the AFP Commissioner speak earlier in estimates this year about the rise in threats against politicians, certainly that’s – we have notice that locally.

It is concerning. You think about your family, I guess, who are the unwitting con scripts to your work or the impact and the threats that might be on them in particular, so my heart goes out to that family and we praise the AFP for their good work.

In yesterday’s energy minister debate, Ted O’Brien refused to commit the Coalition to the Paris agreement, saying that a Coalition government would set targets once it was in government, and not make commitments before (Ted still believes the Coalition could win government from here. Cute. I hope he’s also looking forward to his visit from the Easter Bunny!)

After the debate, (and we imagine a very stern expletive heavy phone call from campaign HQ) O’Brien put out a statement ‘clarifying’ that the Coalition remained committed to the Paris Agreement.

That statement probably came because the Coalition have been burned by comparisons to the Trump administration and the Temu Trump label has set it, meaning the Coalition are now desperately trying to divorce themselves from any potential culture war over Trump areas – like the Paris Agreement.

David Ritter, the Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO picked up on the Trump-like comparisons:

Abandoning the Paris Agreement is a terrible idea, straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook, that would harm our economy, our global standing, and our relationship with our Pacific neighbours.

Australia is the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter, and a major polluter with an outsize responsibility to cut our emissions at emergency speed and scale. As the cost of back-to-back
climate disasters grows, we are also paying a heavy price for climate change.

Shrinking our climate targets and walking away from international cooperation on reducing
emissions and climate finance will harm our economy as the world moves to decarbonise and
alienate our Pacific neighbours on the frontlines of climate change. It would not be in our national
interest to leave the Paris Agreement.

It is shocking that the Coalition is even entertaining the possibility of abandoning this important
global climate accord, which is our best chance at averting catastrophic climate change. Peter
Dutton should distance his party from this Trumpian tactic and commit to keeping Australia in the
Paris Agreement in no uncertain terms.”

Peter Dutton’s announcement today is that a Coalition government would abolish the fuel efficiency standards Labor introduced, because it makes those big utes the Coalition is obsessed with too expensive.
When you’re all about big utes, and not big ideas, than this is the sort of policy you get.

It took Australia so long to adopt fuel efficiency standards (the Coalition made an attempt when Paul Fletcher was a minister, but very quickly shelved it because – big utes) that our passenger vehicles emit at least 50% more CO2 than the global average. Yay us! Winning! And even though the fuel efficiency standards Labor passed are weaker than they should have been, (you’ll be shocked to know that the standards changed after consultation with the car industry) the Coalition still hates them because they make the big, giant utes they have formed their entire personality around, more expensive.

The whole idea of a fuel efficiency standard is the more fuel efficient your car is, the cheaper it is. So it’s an incentive to buy more fuel efficient cars. Which you think that the Coalition would want given it has identified fuel costs as one of the major imposts on the cost of living and is offering a one year fuel excise cut of 25c a litre as a result.

But apparently, it makes sense to cut the revenue that government makes from petrol for a year to help with the cost of living, but not to encourage people to buy more fuel efficient cars, which will help break their dependence on fuel and also lower emissions.

Got it. Big utes for all, while wallets and the planet, burns.

Jim Chalmers and Angus Taylor have agreed to a second debate (who would want this) at a Business Council of Australia event on April 23 – which is the day after the polls open.

From the release:

The event will be the first time during the campaign a debate is held directly with representatives from both small and large businesses

Well, it can’t be worse than what we saw on Wednesday.

Hello and welcome to the second Friday of the campaign, which will see Peter Dutton begin the day in Perth for a breakfast hosted by a media company and Anthony Albanese start in the Northern Territory to try and defend Lingiari.

AAP reports the latest YouGov polling shows the Coalition is still trying to find some footing this campaign:

Latest YouGov polling, released to AAP, reveals Labor has gained ground to forge ahead 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent over the coalition in the two-party preferred vote.

The result is the best for Labor in months and slightly higher than its polling of 52.1 per cent at the 2022 election.

The coalition’s primary vote is now down to 33.5 per cent – lower than at the 2022 election.

And while privately Coalition MPs have conceded they will not win enough seats this election to come close to government (based on the trend, their own polling and that the vibe for change isn’t there) that doesn’t mean Labor is a shoo-in for majority government either.

Lingiari is one of the seat’s Labor needs to defend, but Franklin, Wills, Dunkley, McEwen, Gilmore and Patterson are among those on the bubble (it’s thought Aston will go). And while there are some Labor believe themselves to be a chance of winning – like Brisbane, Leichhardt and Bullwinkle, it’s still a hard path to majority.

And we have four weeks to go. Names on the ballot papers will be set in stone after today and early voting begins on April 22, right after the easter break – voters will make up their minds in a lot of places next week so they can switch off.

The next two weeks are short weeks – campaigning will continue, but it will be in holiday mode, and most voters won’t be paying attention.

Which is why there is growing anger in the Coalition camp over how this campaign has been handled, the decisions which were made and why the policy cupboard is so bare. Anyone paying attention could probably point to that, but anyways.

You have Amy Remeikis and at least three coffees this morning, with the big brains at the Australia Institute at your disposal.

Ready? Let’s get into it.