Should screen producers brace themselves for a federal government review of subsidies, grants and tax breaks for the industry?
Film commentator Geoff Gardner, who blogs at Film Alert, has raised the prospect of an inquiry into screen industry assistance by the Audit Commission as the government strives to slash the budget deficit.
“Given that it’s been a year when we changed government and installed a sort of right wing coalition which has some variable impulses where it comes to industry protection and assistance, it’s interesting that while Holden and SPC Ardmona are, among others, being given tough love by the likes of the silent Andrew Robb, nobody has even remotely focussed on the film industry, a sector where protection, tax breaks, government handouts, grants, loans, guarantees, gifts and transfer of public property to the private sector are absolutely essential for survival,” says Gardner, a former distributor and director of the Melbourne International Film Festival.
“Just as with Holden and Toyota, the film industry has prospered to whatever degree it prospers by state and federal government largesse.
“Over coming months it will be interesting to see whether Tony Abbott’s Commission of Audit takes the opportunity to lift the veil on film industry assistance and suggest changes that might make things tougher for films to be made or cause them to be made more cheaply than at present. The Commission and the Government’s response may of course take the cumbersome route through a recommendation that the Productivity Commission finally get the chance to have a long hard look at things and see whether film industry largesse is warranted.”
When Gardner worked in Canberra the then Industry Minister John Button advised that he was not going to take any action on a submission he had received which recommended the Government launch an inquiry by the Industry Assistance Commission, the predecessor to the current Productivity Commission, into screen industry assistance. Button said he would let the matter simply sit on his desk while he was Industry Minister.
“Button knew that any rational examination would recommend it be closed down immediately," he writes. "Such a proposal would bring unwarranted public wrath on the Government from a poor, struggling but loved sector of the economy that everyone believes is essential to our cultural life.
“That sector has always had, and maintains a highly visible and audible lobbying operation… led by Screen Australia and the various state film bureaucracies.
“Reviews since Button’s time have always been predicated on the best form of increased assistance never on whether there should be any reduction or elimination.”
Arts Minister George Brandis was the architect of the formation of Screen Australia and of the producer tax offsets. Since taking office he's made several speeches that are broadly supportive of the screen industry.
But Gardner implies the hard heads in Treasury combined with budgetary pressures may force a rethink of government assistance.
Gardner concludes, “I’ve always said if we made better films, and more of them that people go out and pay to see, and if we had an international reputation for making high quality works of art that competed well with the best of all nations then that would be in my view a simple but quite profound reason to keep the assistance going. If the film industry is only about job creation well, look around Shepparton, the outer suburbs of Adelaide and Melbourne’s inner industrial areas and see if it should be spared.”