Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise just to indicate support for these amendments. They address issues that were covered by the Senate inquiry into this piece of legislation, and all seek to reduce the damage to the local Australian screen sector that is in this bill—in particular, damage to those small-scale productions which we know are so essential not just to telling our Australian stories, our local stories, but to the local industry. This house, being the state chamber, has senators from all around the country, and in our different states we have very localised, unique screen and film sectors. This bill, as it stands, is going to devastate those local production houses—the local stories coming out of our states—and we need to fix it. This is not asking for anything more than keeping the status quo. There's plenty more that could be done, but we're not asking for anything more. We're just asking for damage not to be done here. Let's take out the bits of this piece of legislation that drive a truck through Australian production, that drive a truck through Australian stories and documentary making. We're not asking for any more money, Minister, through you, Chair. We're simply asking that the government accept that the settings for these smaller productions and for documentaries need to be left as they are, otherwise we risk devastating an industry that, in fact, is only just starting to recover since the pandemic began.

Senator McAllister was correct in her articulation of the wicked problem we have here. It is that, while there is one element of this bill whose passing is desperately needed, there are a whole lot of other elements of this bill that are going to devastate the rest of the industry. They will pit our creatives, our filmmakers and our producers—our storytellers—against each other. This is not a very good thing to do to a sector that is already struggling to get back up and running.

Why on earth the government is being so pig-headed about this is beyond me. I know that over there on the government side Mr Morrison has hardly put himself up as the hero of the arts. He rarely utters the word. He has continued to talk down to the broad arts sector. He refuses to deal with the very harsh reality that the sector is feeling right now because of COVID. Let's not forget that this is the government that cut the department of the arts in the first place. We understand we're dealing with a very difficult mindset when it comes to Mr Morrison and his approach to arts and creatives in this country, but, honestly, this is an unnecessary attack. It's nasty. Pitting the sector against itself is a nasty thing to do. That's what the government's doing here. It is picking winners and letting everybody else fail.

These amendments go some way to trying to fix this and, for those of us in smaller states where our production industry is really starting to become part of our local economies, it is essential that these amendments pass to protect the sector. I hope the crossbench will support the amendments.