Guns N' Roses tour picks up $1.35m total federal government funding

The sixth batch of the federal government's Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) funding was announced late Tuesday, to a mixed industry response.

One of the recipients making world headlines from the announcement is TEG Dainty, who received $600,000 from the $19.5 million pool available to reschedule the Guns N' Roses tour, which was meant to go ahead last month.

When tour promoter Paul Dainty announced the postponement, he said it was clear they would be unable to proceed with the 2021 shows due to COVID's resurgence "despite our best efforts."

"Re-scheduling what is likely to be the biggest stadium rock tour of next year does take some time and I’m delighted that the stars have now aligned," he said.

"Guns N’ Roses are one of the greatest bands of all time and we’re going to make a little bit of history and be back bigger and better in Summer 2022."

The six Australian and two New Zealand dates are now scheduled for November 2022, with the help of $600,000 of RISE investment.

But it isn't the first time they've received a federal government boost.

TEG Dainty also received $750,000 back in batch four's $40 million funding round, announced in July.

That's $1.35 million in Australian government funding for an Australian promoter to tour an international band.

Shadow Arts Minister Tony Burke showed his disappointment in the funding allocation on Twitter yesterday.

"Yesterday the Govt announced who gets taxpayers' money for the Arts RISE grants. $600k for the Guns N' Roses tour. And still not a dollar to support a COVID insurance scheme for Australian artists," he tweeted.

"Does Mr Morrison know what's happening to the sector?"

The industry just last week appealed to the federal and state governments to act immediately on an interruption insurance scheme.

In November, a Senate committee enquiry concluded that an insurance guarantee to future-proof the music industry was not the responsibility of the federal government, because the states and territories made calls regarding border closures, lockdowns and social distancing/capacity restrictions.

From the 3,000 industry professionals surveyed by ilostmygig, there have been over 32,000 lost gigs and over $94 million in lost income since July this year.

Ninety-nine per cent of those surveyed had no income protection or event cancellation insurance.

Batch six RISE funding allocations were assessed based on project commencement, according to the web site.

"Due to the high volume of applications submitted to this Batch, and the need to provide funding to the sector as soon as possible, applications were assessed in priority order from when projects commence," it says.

"Applications that identified a project start date of before 1 February 2022 were assessed first."

Other successful applications this round include promoter Loudness, who received $824,000 for its regional Wine Machine festival; The Rubens, who received $227,600 for their festival Valleyways; and the Gympie Music Muster, who received $1 million to revitalise the event after a two-year COVID hiatus.

Remaining applications that were submitted prior to the program's closure on December 5th will be assessed for batch seven, announced in late January 2022.

There is $20 million remaining for the final recipients.