FAQs =
Some Results!
Billionaires For Bush is the original project that the research drew upon to examine comedy that critiques, using satire and lived experience, issues of Australian social injustice and wealth inequality.
Comment from Professor Robert Phiddian:
“The work wears its progressive cultural politics candidly. This is research into single-voiced (generally stand-up) performers with women, gender-diverse, minority, and differently-abled [disabled] comedians in the foreground. It focuses not on audiences (as so much work in recent decades has done), but on performers, their agency and expression. How do comedians achieve career progression and valid expression in a cultural world shaped by neoliberal public policy and its consequence in culture of creative industries? In a world that forces you to be a creative hustler, how can you squeeze in satirical art worth expressing?
Their relatively open approach to territory fought over in the endless culture wars is, in fact, refreshing. The candidate is clear about where they stand, but then resists the temptation to testify readers into submission or shout at opponents. In particular, the balanced conclusion proposing a bit more support for comedian development through festivals is well-argued and feasible as policy even within the narrow confines of current funding expectations. This looks to me like pragmatic idealism.”
Comment from Professor Dominic Boyer:
"Brady’s blend of cultural analysis and political mission is perfectly consonant with the Action Research (AR) paradigm of human scientific engagement that has inspired their work. The thesis is based on 16 months of fieldwork and a substantial body of original ethnographic research among Australian comedians. In addition to standard anthropological research techniques like participant-observation Brady developed innovative techniques like satirical experiments and autoethnographic approaches to develop a rich empirical basis for analysis."
Thank you! This research has concluded. What’s next? Here are some results…
The thesis, You Can’t Laugh at That! Comedians Shifting the Social Status Quo through Satirical Solidarity will be released to participants in early 2026 but will be embargoed for about a year from the general public.
While the full results cannot be discussed or released before the work is released after embargo, a general statement is possible:
This research highlights just how robust Australian comedic expression as political communication is, and how innovative Australian comedians are to act as agents of cultural democracy. This is important work and is key to keeping Australia’s democracy healthy.
Further to this Australian comedy venues, festivals, comedy collectives and community organisations continue to work hard to promote a fair go in our comedy scene. Sometimes this is in conditions that are difficult and highly competitive because of the nature of market and funding influences in Australia, with much smaller audience sizes that the US or the UK. Additionally, Australia has a history of quiet or soft or indirect censorship of its artists that isn’t often discussed publicly, but well evidenced and acknowledged by those who work in the Australian public policy field.
The key finding that can be shared now, is that the 28 comedians involved came from range of identities and backgrounds with a collective 40 years of experience. Approximately 60% had festival-level and established arts careers and 40% had high profile, national level careers. This research also focuses on the kinds of sociopolitical barriers present in the Australian comedyscape that pose risks to comedians earning a living wage from their comedy. A living wage is defined as enough income to afford rent, food, clothes and other basic necessities.
They all perform comedy about the politics of oppression and/or the lived expression of comedy in Australia - and not one of them maintains any satirical social status quo. In fact, they all push the limits of satire in some way, particularly those who use their own personal and lived experience of marginalisation* and oppression. Many of them challenge political, cultural and social understandings of the experience of oppression through varying means but a defining feature of most limit-pushing satire was a commitment to authentic irony and overidentification (close to reality).
For example, one of the reported limits of political satire in the literature is that it often that it attracts an ‘in-crowd’. Many of the experiences described in this thesis used innovative ways to attract audiences from all political perspectives and walks of life different to their own. This was because of a range of promotional, marketing and content curation strategies that would better attract Australian audiences to more taboo or difficult subjects. These strategies, including not advertising political work as political allowed many to overcome any respectability policing of their work by more conservative external influences.
In fact, this group of comedians all challenge the satirical status quo enough to have some innovative techniques to avoid any soft censorship attempts from the media and/or social institutions and government. Some of these techniques are similar to late-socialist and late-liberal stiobesque techniques practiced in the US and in Europe - practices effective during periods of rapid social and economic change and in times of political precarity.
*My use of the word marginalised, meanwhile, is in keeping with the decolonising ethics of Tuhiwai Smith (2021, p. 260) whereby in “choosing the margins” (see also hooks, 2000) the researcher can honour not only the struggle but also the richness and survival of the communities impacted by colonisation. As the social and economic context of comedy production is an intersectional social arena, this thesis features discussions of women’s rights, gender diversity, disability, and experiences of racism. For example, performers raised in their interviews issues related to disability pride and discussed barriers to performance as an incarnation of the social model of disability. This research, through examining the content moderation practices of grassroots comedians relative to the policing of their bodies and opinions, positions their experiences as issues for broader arts funding, arts and art-related industries, and governance.
What? Who? - more profiles to come on in 2026 of the comedians who took part in the study…stay tuned…
Better Billionaires Australia (BBA) was a University of Melbourne, School of Social and Political Science PhD research project belonging to anthropologist Jack Brady. The project was supervised by Associate Professor Lauren Rosewarne.
This project was Pragmatic Action Research (AR). The project asked questions about how and when comedians and/or satirists moderate their content because of any social and political pressures. It assists in better understanding how media, government and funding relationships and the politics of power impact Australian comedy production.
References cited
hooks, B. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Pluto Press.
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2021). Choosing the Margins: The Role of Research in Indigenous Struggles for Social Justice. In Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (pp. 253–272). London: Zed Books. Retrieved February 20, 2024, from http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350225282.0017