Writing Australia, Creative Australia’s new literature body, launches today, bringing the history of Australian cultural policy full circle: writers were the first artists in Australia to receive government support and Writing Australia represents a renewed focus on the sector after an extended period of neglect.

It’s got a big job ahead of it. Over the last decade, federal funding for literature has dropped roughly 43% in real terms, even as writers’ incomes have stagnated below the poverty line and threats to their livelihoods have proliferated.

So government investment in the sector is critical – not least because supporting writers is nation-building work. We rely on Australian writers to inform and inspire us, tell our stories to the rest of the world, and help us tuck our children in each night with bedtime reading. Australia’s writers are indispensable to our day-to-day lives as imaginative beings and engaged citizens. Quite simply, we can’t live without them…

>>> Read on in The Guardian