He was awarded two consecutive Australian Artists Creative Fellowships, worth more than A$500,000 in total, in the 1990s. The grants were inaugurated after Paul Keating met Tozer while he was teaching at St Edmund's College, the Canberra school where Keating's son Patrick was a student. Keating, who cites Tozer as Australia's greatest pianist, said he felt "ashamed" that a pianist of Tozer's talents was earning only A$9,000 a year, so he introduced the fellowships (they are sometimes referred to as "the Keatings") and the first five-year award in 1989 (A$329,000) went to Tozer. He was the subject of at least one political cartoon.