After years of incremental government funding declines, last week Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke ushered in what he describes as ‘a new page’ for Australia’s literary sector with the launch of Creative Australia’s new Writing Australia council – an industry-led committee that will be “a hub to build expertise and partnerships … support[ing] writers, publishers and a National Poet Laureate”.

On the surface, this is welcome news for Australian writers with its funding package of $26 million ($8.6 million per year) over the next three years.

But what exactly does this new support look like in the wider context of Australian literary sector funding over time?

And to what extent can this new support address the most urgent challenges our writers and publishers are facing now?

Looking at the new funding compared to previous Federal Government policies for Australian writing – most notably during the Whitlam and Keating eras (so long ago!) – it could be said this package looks more like a catch-up investment to help Australian writers get back to where they were a few decades ago.

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While the path of a freelance writer has never been paved with gold, a stark reminder of how different things were back then compared to now, can be found in the 1980s and 1990s diaries of writer Helen Garner – published in 2019, 2020 and 2021 respectively.

In an entry from 1986, Garner – then a 44-year-old writer with three novels under her belt – describes turning down a freelance commission where she was offered ‘only’ $1200 to write a “big piece about Melbourne for a German editor”, whose magazine had a circulation of 250,000 (in today’s money that fee would be $3804).

In another entry written in 1997, Garner recounts being offered “a dollar a word to review movies” for the Australian’s Review of Books.

But would a reputable Australian writer be paid commensurate fees for similar writing jobs today?

Put simply, the answer is ‘no’. The rates for freelance writing jobs nowadays are much lower than that, as media ecosystems continue to fracture and advertising revenue continues to decline.

It’s a similar story for many Australian publishers, with one independent Australian publisher telling ArtsHub that while “the commercial end is in a reasonable state … as for literary writing – at a time when there are more expectations from university-credentialled writers that a career is a possibility and fewer readers prepared to buy these books – we desperately need a hand”.

As founder and director of independent publishing house Upswell, Terri-ann White neatly summarises in a recent piece for Griffith Review, a quick survey of any bookstore shop floor (both online and bricks-and-mortar) is enough to realise the concerning contractions happening across large swathes of the book market these days.

White describes seeing “the narrowing of tropes in fiction and (entirely understandable) turn to escapism in the different types of genre novels and celebrity confessions” among her most recent observations.

She also notes the “boisterous [publishing] market”, dominated by “big multinational multibillion-dollar conglomerates” as another threat to the capacities of small, local publishing houses like hers to support emerging and/or new independent voices in Australian writing who may have quieter, yet no less valuable, stories to share.

In addition to these challenges, there are of course mounting threats from AI, as some writers watch their livelihoods sink under oncoming waves of ultra-cheap AI-generated content.

As one full-time copywriter recently revealed, after ChatGPT’s global launch in 2023, they saw a 45% drop in new leads for their business – an experience shared by many professionals working in that niche of Australia’s writing sector, and bad news for poets and novelists who once used these jobs to boost their incomes.

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So, one obvious question raised by these challenges for Australian writers and publishers is how exactly will the Federal Government’s new $8.6 million a year funding package help ameliorate the problems?

With no detailed plans yet announced – other than to say that Writing Australia’s eight-member council’s role will be to “highlight and boost Australian literature among local and international audiences” – the exact purpose and direction of this new support is far from clear.

But as writer Esther Anatolitis points out in her recent article for The Guardian Australia, while “Writing Australia’s budget of $26 million over three years sounds good by comparison [to previous Federal Government support for Australian literature] … it still represents a decline from a decade ago [when] in 2013-2014, $9 million in grants were distributed to literature projects (the equivalent of $11.7 million today)”.

Anatolitis’ research also shows how, in recent times, Federal Government support for literature has been “chronically disproportionate” when compared to other art forms it funds, such as the visual and performing arts. The writer states that literature received only a 2.4% share of Creative Australia’s (then the Australia Council’s) 2021 budget spend – an allocation of just $4.7 million per annum.

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Then again, she gives the Albanese Government a big tick for its recent expansion of the (Whitlam Government initiated) Public Lending Right Scheme – a move it made in 2023 to ensure lending payments are now being made to authors on their e-books and audio books, not just hard copies.

In addition, the Albanese Government’s commitment to funding a National Poet Laureate position – a role that will begin this year, shows further goodwill.

So, while it’s still very early days for the new Writing Australia council (it’s barely a week old), there is already a palpable sense of expectation being directed at its eight members and its Chair Professor Larissa Behrendt, who the sector is hoping can quickly deliver appropriate support to help ease the pain being felt in these tricky times.