Grenadiers Take Aim At 'Short-Sighted Money Grab' Visa Fee Increases

Following news that visa processing fees are set to significantly increase next month for international acts looking to tour Australia, the frontman for Adelaide outfit Grenadiers has written an open letter to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, asking that he overturn the decision. 

Taking to the band's Facebook page on Tuesday, Jesse Coulter wrote, "This incredibly short-sighted money grab is not only detrimental to the obvious targets in performers from outside Australia, but will have pronounced and dramatic flow-on effects to all industries connected to entertainment.

"If a mid-level band’s capacity to tour Australia is crushed by restrictive visa fees, it doesn’t just affect them. 

"It affects the Australian musicians they were going to take on tour as their support act. It affects the sound & lighting people, crew, stage builders, and others they would have employed. It affects the publicans, venue owners and their staff who rely on these acts coming through to keep their businesses alive. Most of all, it affects the thousands of music-loving Australians who want nothing more than to go and see their favourite acts."

"Music is a spiritual communion for these people," Coulter continues.

"It’s the blood pumping through their veins, the energy in their muscles, the soundtrack to their everyday experience. And to speak perhaps more in your language, these people are willing to pump good money into the Australian economy to support that love."

Peak body Live Performance Australia claim that the new visa processing fees, set to launch on 19 November, could increase by up to 600 percent. 

Read Coulter's full open letter below.