Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 5) Bill 2021 is a really important piece of legislation, of course, and I rise to speak on it out of general concern for this topic but also because I have constituents in my electorate who work in the field. These are people who work very, very hard, who are working in an industry that's really important for Australia and who, frankly, have raised some concerns with me about what the government is doing. Of course, there are some good aspects to this proposed legislation. Typical of this government, though, it has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to doing something good for TV, and here it is finally doing something. But also typical of this mob is that they've attached a whole bunch of things to this that are really quite negative for the rest of the industry.

Let's just remember for a moment that, without a concerted campaign by the opposition and the screen sector across Australia, this bill would also have included an outright reduction in the producer offset for the Australian feature film sector, from 40 per cent to 30 per cent. This of course is incredibly worrying for people who are working in the creative industries, because it's just emblematic of this government's approach to the creative industries and to the arts. They've never seen a creative industries business that they've understood, I think. They seem to not understand the contribution of the creative industries to our Australian economy, to our Australian society and to our Australian culture.

If you just think back to the first budget that this government handed down, in 2014, then Prime Minister Abbott's first budget—not a well-received budget; in fact, probably the least well received budget in many, many years within memory—that budget took the axe to a range of arts funding and creative industries funding, including, I might say, the Interactive Games Fund, which was a Labor initiative to basically make sure that we have a games industry in this country—really important. But the Liberals and Nationals just didn't understand the significance of that, and so they cut it.

Here, we're talking about screen production. The government did back down on their plans to reduce the producer offset for the Australian feature film sector because they were under such immense pressure. It's true, though, that the government has to be placed under pressure; otherwise, it will try to sneak through cuts to and attacks on the creative industries.

Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the increase in qualifying expenditure for the producer offset is bad news for many smaller and lower budget films. Often it's only because of the producer offset that such films can get off the ground here in Australia. Documentaries, which typically have a budget of just over $500,000, are particularly poorly affected. How else do we tell our Australian stories without documentaries? It's a great question, and a lot of people here would remember that we've talked about Australian documentaries in the past, and we need to encourage those productions.

I mentioned that I have a lot of people throughout my electorate who work in this sector, who have businesses in my electorate that are involved in the creative industries. I wanted to particularly mention the increase in the qualifying expenditure threshold for the PDV offset. This applies to post-production and visual effects. This is a sector that Australia actually excels at, even though you don't necessarily hear about it much. Firms like Animal Logic have worked on some of the biggest movies and TV shows out there. It's a really growing industry. And people have spoken about this. I'm not the first and I won't be the last Labor person to speak about these issues.

But I did just want to mention that I received some correspondence from the Australian Post & VFX Alliance—the industry body for the firms that are involved in this particular field, which is post-production and visual effects. It's a copy of a letter that they sent to the minister, and it's under the hand of Marcus Bolton. Marcus wrote to the minister and said, 'The Australian feature film and television industry has enjoyed blockbuster success over the past decade.' He said that government support, and latterly COVID, have accelerated that success, enabling Australia to attract millions in filming and post-production work that would typically stay offshore. His letter goes on to say that the government's PDV offset—the post, digital and visual effects offset—has supported Australian post-production companies to win more international projects and to create more local jobs. He goes on to say, 'However, this hard work is now in jeopardy as the government proposes to raise the offset threshold from $500,000 to $1 million,' and that that's included in the bill that's before us.

He goes on to say that, with most post-production and visual effects budgets below $1 million, increasing the offset threshold risks forfeiting all this work offshore and handing what remains in Australia back to the few large internationally owned firms, leaving Australian owned companies unable to compete. What a terrible thing for this country to lose creative industries firms and to lose work to international competitors in this crucial sector. He says that the Australian post-production and visual effects industry will miss out on the millions worth of post-production and visual effects projects every year, with growing export revenues cut off overnight. He says that the consequence will be that 400 full- and part-time jobs will be loss in Australia—that's the significance of this change—and that the opportunity to cross-subsidise Australian productions and tell Australian stories, which comes with getting this work, will be lost.

I think you can tell from what the industry body are saying that they have grave concerns about this. I just wanted to mention that another person from the same industry, someone who I know very well, has put it to me in slightly blunter terms. He said to me: 'We have done it tough enough through COVID, so why, when we're on our knees, make it worse with these proposed changes, which will kill the Australian domestic post-production sector? It simply makes no sense.' That's what this gentleman said to me, and he's got a business that is based in my electorate that does this sort of work.

When you see bills like this, they've got these dry titles, and it sounds very technical, but really what they're about is creative industries, Australian culture, Australian content and Australian jobs. Here in this House, at all times, but particularly now—when our country is facing a crisis of a scale that is really unprecedented in everyone's lifetimes who are here; when we are under a lot of anxiety; when we have come to appreciate the value of entertainment and of content, of documentaries, of information to keep us company through those lockdown periods that we've had, particularly for people in quarantine, who can't go out, who are alone, and for whom entertainment and film and screen are links and connections to the outside world that they have precious few of—we have seen the importance of content, of screens, of films, of TV. Why on earth would we want to make it harder for small and medium Australian companies to participate in that sector?

How important is it to us, as a nation, that we see ourselves reflected back to us? How important is it that we see Australian stories on our screens? And how important is it to us that we see Australian jobs and Australian creatives and Australian businesses making a contribution to this sector? It is so important. I really want to urge the government to consider very carefully changes that they're making to these sorts of arrangements that could have these knock-on effects for Australians. I know that I'm not the only person with constituents in this sector, but, of course, representing, as I do, an inner-city inner-Brisbane electorate, I know I've got an incredibly high proportion of people for whom this would be incredibly important. So I wanted to speak to the bill to make those points, and to encourage the government because, look, you've just got to get better at dealing with the arts. That's high arts, that's low arts. You've got to think about how relevant the arts are to the Australian people. You have just got to take them into account, take them into your thinking.

We all saw during COVID how the government deliberately designed JobKeeper to exclude certain sectors, and the arts really suffered during COVID. The arts are still suffering in this country. It's not just screen, of course; it's everything. It's theatre, it's music, it's ballet, it's opera, it's the orchestras who don't necessarily have audiences, it's the live bands, it's the jazz clubs, it's the art galleries, it's visual arts, it's dance. I should give a special shout-out to playwrights and dramaturges—I certainly have one or two friends who would be very sad if they didn't get a shout-out—because they've been suffering. Creative people whose lives and whose passions have been dedicated to entertaining, informing and creating Australian stories to reflect our society back to itself, they've been suffering through COVID. As I said, this government designed JobKeeper for certain sectors. They delayed and delayed and delayed on the arts support. Even on a much smaller scale, in my electorate last year I had to fight this government when they were trying to cut funding for Backbone Youth Arts, a lovely organisation that engages young people in the arts and also contributes to job outcomes for people. At the moment we're in another battle for this poor organisation, because the LNP council administration in Brisbane is trying to get them out of their current lodgings in east Brisbane.

Why is the LNP so hopeless when it comes to the arts? Why can't Liberals and Nationals understand in their bones, like we do on the Labor side of the House, the significance of the creative arts—even just the question of a creative outlet or even participation. When we talk about sport we sometimes talk about the elite sports on the one hand and the club sports, community sports on the other. It's the same with the arts. Of course we all love the elite arts—we love the big stadium concerts, we love amazing headline visual arts exhibitions—but there's also the participation dimension of the arts. There's the participation dimension of being in a local band—maybe you're in a garage band; I certainly am—or maybe you play in an orchestra or maybe you are involved in amateur jazz or tap.

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