If these companies were adequately taxed, federal and state governments would have more money to spend on healthcare, education, infrastructure and more money to spend on the arts.

When a local author publishes a book, they sign an agreement with a company for their work to be edited, designed and published, then sold to readers.

For each book sold, the author is entitled to a royalty or a share of the total revenue the publisher received for selling the book.

If they’re lucky, the rights will sell internationally, and the book will be available around the world. In each territory, on each sale, the author will receive a small cut.

When Australia allows fossil fuel companies to extract resources without paying royalties or even any tax, it would be like local authors giving their finished manuscripts to companies such as Penguin Random House or Allen & Unwin and not expecting to see any money from the sales of books sold locally.

It would be like those companies, who profited off local book sales not paying any tax.

Aside from failing to collect adequate tax, Australia also offers generous subsidies – including over $14 billion in fossil fuel subsidies across state and territory governments in 2023.

Meanwhile, Australia provides a fraction of the funding which organisations and individuals need to make art.

You might think this favourable treatment for the mining industry is because it employs so many more people, but in 2023 the mining industry employed 220,000 people while arts and recreation employed 254,000.

In 2021-22, foreign-owned Penguin Random House paid just over $4 million tax on taxable income of just over $16 million. Santos Limited paid no tax at all on a taxable income of $74 million.

By appropriately taxing fossil fuel companies there would be plenty of money for public programs at a time when costs are skyrocketing and it’s harder than ever to produce new work.

Here are just three ideas for how the money could noticeably improve our national culture by supporting artists to create more work for us to read, watch, view and hear.

Funding unfunded excellence

Anyone who has sat on a peer-assessment panel to determine which applicants receive grant money for their next project will know about the surplus of brilliance we have in this country.

In each round, at a state and federal level, there are projects that meet all criteria and are deserving of funding but miss out arbitrarily because of the limited size of the funding pool.

This sad phenomenon is known, broadly, as Australia’s “unfunded excellence”.

The process is dispiriting for assessors, applicants and administrators alike.

Given much creative work is operating according to different logics than return on investment and profiteering, and so few artists receive grants, Australians are missing out on work that artists write, sculpt and perform.

Increasing the number and value of grants would mean artists, especially those from marginalised backgrounds, could spend time on their work rather than having to cram their creativity around paid jobs.

Funding cultural institutions

In 2023-24, Australia spent $3.5 billion on a fuel tax credit to the mining industry and less than $2 billion on arts and cultural heritage.

While there is plenty of money to subsidise fuel for mining companies, cultural institutions have suffered from funding scarcities for decades.

The National Archives are full of perishing records that can never be replaced once ruined.

While there was funding in the 2023-24 federal budget to fund the preservation of some films at the National Film and Sound Archive, this is only part of the work needed to protect film heritage in Australia.

In 2020, the National Library of Australia limited collecting materials from Japan, Korea and China and mainland Southeast Asia, after 70 years of acquistions that had built a resource of local and international renown.

It was only in response to a public campaign that the library received funding in last year’s budget to fix leaking roofs that were damaging precious holdings. Over the same period, other cultural institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia and National Museum of Australia, have suffered from neglect and austerity.

These institutions need proper funding for the sake of citizens in general and artists in particular.

Indeed, for artists, they contribute twice over: first they provide material for research, inquiry and exploration and a way to understand culture. Second, they collect the work of the present and preserve it for the future, supporting the ambitions of artists.

Funding grants and prizes

While major multinationals avoid tax, most arts prizes are taxed – the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards are a notable exception.

When an author wins the Miles Franklin Literary Award or a painter wins the Archibald, they pay tax on their win. Absurdly, someone who successfully bets on the winner of either of these prizes pays no tax on their windfall.

If an artist is awarded a grant from state or federal funding bodies, they must pay tax on that grant in line with their income tax.

Artists already struggling for an income and whose work is chosen to be the best among their peers, find themselves paying more tax than some foreign-owned companies. Increasing prizes such as premiers’ literary prizes would help make writers’ livelihoods more sustainable.

It is grossly inequitable to make artists pay tax while major multinational companies avoid contributing to local services.

Such tax policy deprives Australians of the arts and culture we could otherwise fund if fair taxation were enforced.

As readers, listeners, audiences and viewers, we miss out.

Australia can choose to keep giving away our resources and deprive our culture, or we can choose to tax companies making profit from our resources and enable our culture to flourish.