The Australian film industry has reacted with fury to the suggestion that Screen Australia, the organisation responsible for a significant number of Australian films and television dramas, should lose half its funding.
"Culturally it would put us back in the stone age," said John L Simpson, producer and founder of the film distribution company Titan View of the Commission of Audit's recommendation. "I thought that Australians had got over the cultural cringe, the idea that the only culture engaging with is the culture imported into this country, but that's what's going to happen. We'll be a cultural backwater if we don't invest."
"It would have a devastating effect on the Australian film industry," said film producer and director Sophie Hyde. "It's already a very underfunded industry. We do so much with the small amount that we get, but I think that would effectively decapitate it."
Robert Connolly, a filmmaker and former board member of Screen Australia described the recommendation as "catastrophic". He said that Screen Australia receives around $100m a year and has funded some of the most successful homegrown television of recent times. On 9 February, he said, "there was the INXS biopic and the Schappelle Corby one and there were almost five million Australians watching drama that Screen Australia had invested in.
"When you look at the top TV shows in Australia last year, the fact that over 90% of them was Australian drama reflects to me the huge appetite that Australians have for local screen content. Any government that would take up these recommendations is denying a future generation of Australians a chance to see our stories on screen in the volume that we're used to."
He added that Indigenous filmmakers would be particularly hard hit, pointing to Screen Australia-funded successes including The Sapphires, Samson and Delilah, which won the Camera d'or at Cannes, and the TV series Redfern Now.
Simpson said that Screen Australia-funded films attracted tourists to Australia, employed local techincians and artisans, and boosted the nation's image abroad. "The films that we make aren't just a piece of fluffy entertainment, they're exporting our intellectual property to the world. We have some of the leading filmmakers and artists, people like Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, and the esteem we are held in around the world is partly because of our film and television exports."
The Commission of Audit includes a recommendation that the residual 50% funding is directed specifically to Australian content, including films with "an historical perspective".
"It worries me enormously when I see a Commission of Audit recommending what kind of programmes we should make," said Kingston Anderson, general manager of the Australian Directors Guild.
He said that Screen Australia has already had to make staff reductions and effeciency savings over the previous five years. "To say that you're going to cut by 50% and increase Australian production doesn't make any sense."
The commission also suggested that the industry body could also be merged with the Australia Council, the country’s main arts funding organisation.
"They're just different bodies," said Hyde. "Not to say that it couldn't work, but at the moment there are people in both places who know what they're doing and you would lose that. It's a completely different way of operating."
The Australia Council would be merged with other arts related bodies, including the Australia Business Arts Foundation, to create a single Arts Council.
Major museums, such as the National Gallery, the National Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, would remain untouched.
Neither Screen Australia or the Australia Council were willing to comment on the recommendations.
