Perin Davey (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to support the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 5) Bill 2021. Like Senator Griff, I have had many conversations with the industry, who have stressed to me, as Senator Griff quite rightly says, that it is the lesser of two evils. But, importantly, for the changes to the Australian screen production incentive, it is imperative that the parliament pass this as soon as possible. As Senator McAllister pointed out in her contribution earlier and Senator Griff also noted, many productions have received finance on the basis that this change will go through and will be retrospective to 1 July this year. So it is imperative that we pass this bill.

I participated in the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee process that reviewed this bill and I want to note that the committee, while it found that support for the bill was mixed, noted that the support for schedule 1 of the bill, which facilitates the increase to the Australian screen production incentive, was overwhelming and the committee recommended that the bill be passed. Furthermore, industry organisations such as Free TV Australia and Screen Producers Australia have advised of the need for timely passage of this bill to give the industry the certainty and the confidence they need to make important investment decisions so that we can have the Australian content that every contributor today has highlighted is important.

Senator Hanson-Young quite rightly spoke of the need for us to be able to hear, see, listen to and watch Australian stories. I also want to note how many of those Australian stories are produced in regional Australia and the economic input of the screen production industry in regional areas—places like Broken Hill, where we've seen some fantastic screen productions; and the little town of Silverton, which is proudly home to the fabulous Mad Max Museum. These regional areas benefit from our screen production sector, and the screen production sector benefits from the screen production incentive.

Several witnesses to the inquiry, however, did raise concerns about the increase in the qualifying Australian production expenditure threshold, and I want to address those concerns today. These concerns were particularly dominant in the documentary sector. However, the department did point out that Screen Australia is being provided an extra $33 million in additional funding to target and support high-quality and culturally important Australian content, with a focus on the documentary sector.

A number of stakeholders also raised concerns about the increased threshold on the post, digital and visual effects sector, or the PDV sector, highlighting that often PDV work is split between several smaller companies. They raised the concern that meeting that $1 million threshold is a bridge too far. However, in their response submission—admittedly, late submission—to the committee, the department did clarify that what is commonly known as the QAPE threshold of $1 million applies to the whole production, not the individual contract. So a production company would be able to enter into PDV contracts with multiple companies at less than the $1 million as long as the total equated to the million dollars.

The committee also noted that the threshold remains unchanged at $500,000 for shorter form productions of up to 60 minutes for non-feature length content. Based on that information, the committee recommended the bill be passed but it also recommended that the department consult with industry further to develop measures to strengthen the Australian screen production incentive requirements to maximise the value of work awarded to Australian PDV providers. I sincerely hope that the department has taken that recommendation on board and commenced that work to see what we can do to continue to encourage the use of Australian PDV providers who are located all over Australia.

The beauty about post-production work is that it can be done almost anywhere, and we have some fantastic PDV companies based in regional New South Wales—a big shout-out to them. I hope that the successful passage of this bill today sees much more investment in Australian content, Australian screen production and Australian post-production, digital and visual effects. Thank you.