Has Burke got lobbyists in his backyard? Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, has announced legislation to compel the multinational streaming giants to produce more Australian content. It’s not what it seems writes Simon Nasht.
Recently, government MPs have been arriving at Canberra airport only to be greeted by large signs demanding that Australian stories be seen on the massively profitable streamers like Netflix , Disney+, Amazon, Paramount, Apple and newer arrivals like HBO Max. It was a reminder that for years, Labor has promised regulations requiring these global giants to spend some of their vast, tax-free Australian profits on local productions.
The Australian screen industry had finally got its act together and had launched a damaging grassroots campaign, targeting local MPs and gathering considerable support from cross-bench politicians who began asking uncomfortable questions in Parliament.
Scare campaign
Meanwhile, the streamers were running a hardcore scare campaign, erroneously claiming any local content legislation would breach the Free Trade Agreement with the US, and threatening the wrath of Trump if Australia dared to protect its cultural life (neatly ignoring that similar quotas were already in operating in the EU, Canada, South Korea, Brazil and many other nations)
Yesterday, just as the jockeys were saddling up for the Melbourne Cup, Arts Minister Tony Burke dropped the news that he was finally going to act. He proudly announced a new quota regime that he claimed would lead to a huge increase in Local content on the streamers across drama, documentary, children’s TV, and, bizarrely, given the commercial tastes of the streamers, education and the arts.
Yippee! A red-letter day for Australian culture, and putting to bed a long-running sore that had been embarrassing the government for some time, the failure to meet its promise to introduce local content quotas on the global streaming platforms.
His spruikers were out spinning the news to the Press Gallery, who bought the story just as Burke had wanted. Except, in their enthusiasm, someone gave the game away. Buried in an otherwise misleading article ($) in the AFR, political correspondent Ronald Mizen was told the alarming truth. Mizen quoted an unnamed government spokesman who inadvertently let the cat out of the bag:
The government’s view is all streamers, bar one, are already spending enough on Australian content to meet the new thresholds.
There we have it. After years of prevarication, position papers, consultations, and head scratching, and in the face of a fierce recession in the screen industry largely caused by the disruption of the streamers, the outcome is, wait for it, no change. The status quo will be maintained.
Details tell another story
The devil, of course, will be in the details. As the government smashes ahead with the changes today by introducing a bill no one has seen, it is apparent there is a massive get-out-of-jail clause for the streamers. They have the choice of how the quota spend will be measured. On the one hand it’s either a straightforward per centage of the revenue they generate in Australia, set by the Government at a low 7.5%; or they can choose to take a 10% quota based on their ‘expenditure’ in Australia on programming.
This second expenditure model is all but impossible to independently assess. Remember, these platforms have already managed to so manipulate their books as to pay virtually no tax on several billion dollars of revenue in Australia. Now Labor has let them off the hook by allowing them to pick any figure they choose as the baseline for reckoning how much they must spend on original Australian productions.
It’s a dark joke, a con that has neatly threaded the needle between being seen to protect Australian screen culture while appeasing the powerful streaming lobby.
We can expect some ritual hand wringing from the streamers about ‘unnecessary interference in the market’, but in truth, the message back to head office is “mission accomplished”. The Australian government had bent over backwards and given them what they wanted. And in return, there will be no serious pushback from Washington.
Exhausted by the fight, and perhaps captured by the spin doctors, even the industry’s major lobby group, Screen Producers Australia, welcomed the news, issuing its media release simultaneously with the Government (and apparently before the SPA council, effectively its board, had even seen the wording). A case of Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps?
You’ve got to hand it to Albanese and Burke. They are deft political players, and as with its recent environmental legislation, the government has all the appearance of keeping its promises while slyly avoiding any negative consequences. The outcome in this case, however, is an act of cultural vandalism that will resonate for decades.
Soon enough, we will all be speaking American.
Burke gets Netflixed. Secret lobbying did the trick for the big streamers