Does the Australian government pay for travel and lodging?
No but it offers rebates on overseas expenditure after the financial year is concluded — about 50% return on export related expenses. What prompted you to start the AustralAsian Music Business Conference? There wasn’t one in Australia. At the time we weren’t blessed with the plethora of ones like New Music Seminar and MIDEM overseas, and there needed to be a networking event that enabled and empowered people in the business at home to export as well as to develop locally. So we got up with Apple, and they gave us a sponsorship which has continued over 12 years, since 1993. As I understand it, it’s the only sponsored music event for the company in the world. We’ve done it every other year — except for one additional year we ran in the halcyon days of the Internet bubble — and it’s been sponsored by Apple for all that time. In 2005, we had 52 speakers, including Roland Swenson from SXSW and Ted Cohen from EMI as overseas keynote speakers, along with U.S. producer Roger Sommers and Can
