Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to begin my remarks by acknowledging the passing of Mr David Dalaithngu. Mr Dalaithngu was a remarkable storyteller, painter, dancer and actor. His powerful presence connected with audiences across the world. Most Australians of my generation have Storm Boy etched on their memory—a powerful childhood exposure to a different way of seeing the world. At a time when it was uncommon to see First Nations actors on screen and racial stereotypes dominated Australian society, Mr Dalaithngu brought culture and country to mainstream audiences in a way unseen before. He transformed Australian cinema. I offer my deepest condolences to the families in Ramingining, Maningrida, Darwin, Murray Bridge and across Australia.

This bill is labelled a Treasury bill. Weirdly, it combines non-controversial changes to corporate insolvency law with what is perhaps the biggest overhaul of screen policy settings in decades, so I will confine my comments to just schedule 1 of this bill, which deals with screen policy.

It's important to place this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 5) Bill 2021, in the context of some recent history in terms of how this government has treated the screen industry and existing tax support structures. Australia's screen industry has given us some incredible Australian stories: Gallipoli, Wake in Fright, A Country Practice, The Secret Life of Us, Paper Planes, The Dry. As a country we are capable of making incredible film and television. In January this year the government used a non-disallowable instrument to completely change the local content quota system. It effectively removed the requirement for certain types of content, such as Australian children's television, to be made at all. Eleven months on, children's television productions tell us their commissions have completely collapsed. That is an entirely predictable outcome but it doesn't mean it is any less worrying.

The Australian market is a small one in global terms. Premium film and television is expensive to make. There are some movies which have been huge commercial successes—Gallipoli, Crocodile Dundee, Muriel's Weddingbut there are others which have told incredible Australian stories and which might not have got off the ground without government support. Samson and Delilah, Hearts and Bones and Alex and Me come to mind. Our industry requires a level of government support in order to flourish and to continue to produce great Australian content. It's the kind of equation you see in many areas of government policy. There is a public good at stake—that is, the production of Australian film and television shows. If the market won't provide that outcome on its own, government steps in to help. One part of that framework is Australian content for television. But, as I've said, the government's approach to this is killing this sector. For many years commercial television networks were required to produce a certain amount of Australian children's content, documentary and drama each year.

The other part is taxation offsets for film and TV production and post-production services which make it easier for Australian made shows and films to get off the ground. What has been so odd about the government's approach is that for many years this has been common ground in terms of policy. Both sides of politics have agreed that nobody wants our kids growing up without hearing Australian accents on the TV screen. We want to see local heroes at the local cinema. But this government have walked away from that consensus, and what's disgraceful is that they use the cover of COVID to do so. Last year, when the minister used the cover of COVID to suspend the subquotas for the different television genres for a year, they swore black and blue—just a year, they said—that it was a temporary measure. But those who feared there was more going on were sadly proved right. As I said, 11 months on from a decision to remove those subquotas, children's television production companies tell us their commissions have collapsed. The government's next step in their campaign was to try to halve Foxtel's local content quota from 10 per cent to five per cent. A lot of people might not realise how much fantastic content has come out of Foxtel—Love My Way, Upright, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wentworth, just to name a few. This time government senators were awake—well done to those government senators—and they said no. They along with other senators recommended in a bipartisan report that the section that halved Foxtel's Australian content requirement be dropped from the bill. They backed Labor's position, and the government backed down. It shouldn't have come to that—it shouldn't have been necessary—but it did.

This bill is part 3 of the government's attack on the local screen industry. It's not as bad as it might have been. Their original plan was even worse. The original plan included a reduction in a producer's offset from 40 per cent to 30 per cent for an Australian feature film. That would have devastated the Australian film industry. It would have meant films like The Dressmaker would not have been made. It took a coalition of film producers and stars to come together. They travelled to Canberra several times to make the government listen. It also took a groundswell of support from everyday Australians who'd enjoyed a summer of Australian film—Higher Ground, Penguin Bloom, The Dry,just imagine last summer without them. That part has been dropped from this bill. Unfortunately, many other parts of this bill are just as damaging to the industry, and I'll go through a few of these in turn. The threshold for qualifying expenditure to access producer offset for film has been doubled, from $500,000 to $1 million. That means the only productions that will be able to access the producer offset will be large, premium productions. It's pretty obvious what the problem is: many smaller productions that need the offset to get off the ground will not go ahead. This particularly impacts documentary productions, which typically have an expenditure of just over $500,000. There are some fantastic examples of recent Australian documentaries—In My Blood It Runs provides just one example. These are true Australian stories, and the government wants to cut them off at the knees.

The threshold for qualifying expenditure to access post digital and visual effects offsets, PDV for short, has also doubled, from $500,000 to $1 million. A lot of Australians might not realise how immensely successful the PDV industry is. It's a growing industry and it's incredibly important and a heavy hitter on the world stage. This is one of our great exports. Lots of people might not have heard of Animal Logic, but lots of Australians will have watched their work—Captain Marvel, Peter Rabbit and The LEGO Movie are just some examples. They are considered one of the best outfits in the world. I've had the very good fortune of touring their studios, meeting their CEO, seeing their vision. This is an incredible example of outstanding Australian innovation, leveraging some of our best capabilities. We are a country that has terrific levels of education, high levels of digital literacy and immensely qualified people doing really creative things.

The Australian Post & VFX Alliance estimates that 400 jobs in this incredible sector are at stake if this change goes ahead. The Gallipoli clause, which allows expenditure incurred overseas to be claimed against the offset, will also be removed. This clause was inspired by the classic Australian movie Gallipoli, and it means that Australian films that need to shoot in overseas locations are not disadvantaged. The reality is that sometimes Australian stories require part of their production to be filmed overseas, particularly given the diversity of our population. Imagine the film Lion if parts of it could not have been filmed in India. Imagine Gallipoli without their having gone overseas to film it. It just doesn't make sense. This is a completely blunt instrument. If the government is trying to encourage Australian employment in the screen industry, this is not the way to go about it.

Other more minor measures in this schedule include the removal of certain types of expenditure that can be claimed against the offset, such as overheads, copyright, and other measures designed to limit the coverage of the current offsets.

I don't dispute that there are good parts in this bill, or just one good part, and that is raising the producer offset from 20 per cent to 30 per cent for television productions. I want the industry to know that Labor appreciates how important this change is to them. It has been a long fight to get there. As these changes are due to retrospectively apply from 1 July, many television productions have already budgeted for this change. They are desperately awaiting the passage of this legislation. Despite everything in this bill having been announced in September last year, and the bill itself having been introduced back in June, the government have left it until now, the second last day in the last sitting week of the year, to list the bill. It's inexplicable. It's left Australian producers desperate and put the financing of local productions at risk. The government has wasted time, playing silly political games, for absolutely no reason, and the industry has paid the price.

Labor will move an amendment to this bill that will seek to remove the damaging parts of this bill while keeping the increase to the producer offset for television intact. We recognise the urgency and the importance of the bill's passage. We won't stand in the way. But we utterly reject the government's attempt to bundle measures that are unambiguously good for the industry in with measures that are damaging to other parts of the industry. This approach, careless at best, malicious at worst, tells you everything about this government's respect for Australian stories.