It’s Saturday August 31, 2013. You’re curled up at home after a gig. You flick on the ABC. A middle-aged white man in a plaid shirt stares back at you. He’s reliving the birth of grunge from Australia’s best-loved couch – the red Rage couch.

The man isn’t Tim Rogers. “Coming up is Nirvana, who I got to see at the first ever Big Day Out,” he begins. He’s not Bernard Fanning. “It went off. People could not get in. Sensational gig, great band; ended too early.” He’s not Kram.

And nor is he Peter Garrett – closer, though. The bloke’s name is Anthony, and he’s an aspiring DJ and amateur music historian. You might have also known him then as Labor’s attack-dog-in-chief, that Camperdown knockabout from the Left faction, The Honourable Anthony Albanese MP.

Two years later, “DJ Albo” approaches the decks at the Melbourne Trades Hall in Carlton, USB stick outstretched. He cues a track, grips the mic, and launches into a set piece about anti-Thatcherism as a wellspring of counter-cultural energy in the late ’80s. “The only good thing about Tory governments is it produces good music in protest.” Mic drop.

Fast-forward another 10 years, and Anthony Albanese, self-styled music nerd, is the boss of the entire country, returned to government this month by a landslide margin not seen since World War II. His public interest in music, however, has long since taken a back seat – and it’s not lost on the industry.

We’re now three years into a Labor government – an “arts party” government – and the music industry, its artists and its venues are on their knees. Indeed, the pub directly opposite the Melbourne Trades Hall, a proving ground for local bands called The John Curtin Hotel, was on the brink of demolition just two years ago, spared at the 11th hour after unionists threatened to picket.

It’s a story that’s become all too familiar for live venues across the country. Collingwood punk institution The Tote was on the brink last year. It was saved – just – after raising millions in a mammoth Go Fund Me campaign. Fitzroy landmark The Night Cat is in a similar bind. Sydney’s Frankie’s Pizza, The Zoo in Brisbane, The Cambridge in Newy – all gone. Don’t even get me started on festivals.

Suffice to say, DJ Albo isn’t the selector in shining armour we had hoped for.

Last year Australian musicians were among the lowest paid workers in the country, reports the ABC, banking under a third of minimum wage per person per annum. How did we get here?

Listening In, a recent report commissioned by Creative Australia, confirmed what we’ve heard from musicians and venue operators for years: live music audience numbers are – broadly speaking – healthy, but punters are increasingly likely to fill MCGs for Taylor Swift tours than Bergy Bandrooms for Tongue Dissolver shows. Bergy what? Tongue who? Exactly.

In a surprise to nobody, the report also singled out cost-of-living pressures as a major obstacle for would-be gig-goers, the rising price of a night out enough to dissuade the punter from catching their favourite act.

Australian musos have a reputation for punching above their weight. But sadly, the conditions they require to flourish are simply no longer there.

That needs to change now.

Albanese has been returned to government with more fervour than a Private Function house show, which is to say, there’s never been a better time for the man who famously met Bob Hawke in an earring and a denim jacket to unleash the grunge nuffie within and back live music to the hilt.

Since we started canning non-alcoholic beers in 2020, Heaps Normal has made a point of getting behind live music, from supporting tours and keeping green rooms lubricated to donating a big whack of our beer sales to charities like Support Act.

Last year, we decided to push that commitment one step further, launching our own independent imprint, Heaps Normal Records. The mission statement? To help artists make records that would not otherwise be made. To make sure all profits end up back in their pockets, and to promote their music in a way that would free them up to do what they do best: create. Imagine if Albo and the party faithful followed suit.

That’s not to say they’re doing nothing. At the top of Labor’s election campaign, arts minister Tony Burke pledged an additional $16.4 million to Revive Live, a program devised for the 2024-25 Budget to resuscitate live music venues and festivals around the country. That would bring the total investment in the program to $25 million – a welcome boost for a sector that suffered year-on-year cuts during the Coalition’s recent nine-year reign, a near-decade of cultural decay that began just one week after Albo graced that famous red couch.

Revive Live doesn’t promise a cheaper night out for the punter, nor will it see artists earning anything approaching minimum wage. It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s just scratching the surface of what’s possible.

There are other green shoots of positive change, like the ACT Government’s Gaming Machine Authorisation Surrender Incentive, which puts cold hard cash in the hands of venues willing to give up their pokie machines. This sort of solution is already proving effective in helping create better conditions for live music to flourish – just look at the Canberra Bowling Club, which is now decked out with a complete live-music setup as a result of the tens of thousands of dollars it received when it gave up its pokies. We need more of these creative ideas, and fast.

With 94 seats in the bag at the time of writing and an opposition facing existential crises across the board, the Labor government now has an unprecedented opportunity to act on its morals and make good its reputation as Australia’s arts party. Now’s the time for DJ Albo to get the band back together and dig in on behalf of the music industry – it’s an opportunity that’s too good to be wasted.

Broadsheet publishes a range of opinion stories from independent contributors. The ideas and views expressed in these pieces don’t reflect those of Broadsheet or its staff.