The MEAA seems confident it will win the battle to thwart the deregulation of the process of approving visas for imported actors and crew.
The union has been lobbying the government to scrap plans to drop the decades-old requirement for the Arts Minister to consult with the union before granting visas for film and TV productions funded by taxpayers.
The government ordered a departmental review of Temporary Work (Entertainment) visa (Subclass 420) with a view to cutting what it described as “reducing the burden and cost of unnecessary or inefficient regulation.”
The MEAA mobilized the support of its members as it launched a Save Our Stories campaign and has lobbied Labor, the Greens and crossbench Senators to veto any legislation to liberalize the visa process.
“At the time of writing, we believe we are very close to seeing a win on this issue,” an Equity official advised the National Performers Committee (NPC), which votes on visa applications, last month.
Earlier this year the Arts Department told IF that any amendments identified by the government would be undertaken by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in 2015-16.
However any change is unlikely in the short term following the appointment of Mitch Fifield as Communications and Arts Minister, who is dealing with the wider issue of media deregulation.
Meantime the MEAA has expressed concern that the low budget feature film scheme being developed by Screen Producers Australia would result in a halving of wages.
SPA is proposing that all participants- producers, directors, writers, cast and crew- would receive 50 per cent of their minimum award fees, reinvest the balance and thus share in the potential profits.
The scheme would apply to features costing less than $1.5 million which would not be eligible for Screen Australia funding but would qualify for the producer offset
Equity’s Geoff Morrell, who is leading negotiations with SPA and the other guilds, told NPC members that some technicians fear the scheme would lead to many films being crewed by people with limited experience.
Under that scenario, according to Morrell, “no one learns anything and gets paid half a wage.”
Morrell told the NPC he has had informal discussions about the scheme with individual guilds and “they are all largely resistant to it.”
ADG executive director Kingston Anderson tells IF he supports the idea of a low budget scheme but observes, “We have not seen anything that seems workable at this stage.”
Anderson adds, “We would like to see the feature film agreement (which is up for negotiation) before we see a low budget agreement.”