Australian Screen Industry Body Demands Global Streamers Pay Content Levy

Jesse Whittock
·5 min read

Australian producers are “at risk” of becoming “slaves” to international streamers, a top industry body has warned, as the debate around regulation heats up in the country.

Screen Producers Australia (SPA) made the comment in a statement issued to the National Cultural Policy inquiry hearing today for the government’s upcoming ‘Revive’ plan. Streaming regulation has become the hot button topic since the long-term plan to revamp the arts in the country was first announced in January last year.

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SPA, which represents most of Australia’s main producers, has been consistently vocal in its criticism of the global streamers. It is advocating for the likes of Netflix and Prime Video to spend a minimum 20% of their local revenues on Australian content within three years.

The Australian government has pledged to introduce streaming regulation on July 1, but is yet to table a motion in Parliament, leaving producers in limbo over what shape it will take — if it indeed comes to pass.

SPA has laid out four main concerns about the National Cultural Policy, which will contain the legislation around streaming. Along with the 20% quota, it wants a “strong definition” of what Australian content is, that Australian IP should be “secured” for Australians and “treated as a valuable national asset,” and for the indie sector to “retain its independent character.”

“With commercial free-to-air broadcasters all but having been allowed to give up on commissioning any Australian drama or children’s programs, and subscription television commissioning only the minimum amount required under an outdated 1990s era scheme, we are now faced with a situation in which global streamers are increasingly the masters of Australia’s screen industry, and our industry is at risk of becoming their slaves,” the SPA claimed. “For all of these reasons, our members are facing a very tough future.”

The SPA believes streamers have been “threatening” the Australian government that they will “shut up shop in Australia if regulated, with no regard for the viability of the local screen industry that they are exploiting for only their own benefit.”

“Asking streamers to allocate a small portion of the revenue gained from Australian subscribers back to Australian audiences and to ensure a sustainable Australian production industry that can tell our nation’s stories using the most powerful cultural medium we have – our screens – doesn’t seem too much to ask,” it added.

In November, a consultation paper focused on creating one of two models: a revenue-based system that leaves out sport spend and an expenditure-based model that escalates depending on subscriber numbers. However, both left out documentary — one of three genres named by the National Cultural Policy as critical — and the SPA claimed unnamed streamers had since circulated misleading information that docs such as Prime Video’s cricket series The Test and Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles would not be counted as Australian content.

Definitions of ‘Australian content’

The SPA pointed to statistics from an ACMA report that showed “Australia-related” or international spend (including overseas films and TV shows shot in Australia) by the five largest SVOD players in Australia had increased around 60% year-on-year to A$452.9M in 2022-2023, but that spending on Australian content had, by contrast fallen, from A$335.1M to A$324.1M.

It claimed this was because “international streamers will commonly conflate these two figures, to suggest that their spending, whether on Australian stories or international stories filmed in Australia are one and the same thing.”

The SPA said streamers are campaigning for a “loose” definition of ‘Australian content’ that would allow them to declare their spend through several banks of investment that doesn’t ultimately benefit local producers. This was part of an intentional play to “muddy the waters between what is genuinely Australian content and what is international.”

The body also pointed to the “weaponization” of the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement “to influence this streamer regulation.”

The SPA alleged through “informed analysis” that around 70% of international streamer revenues from Australia turned directly into “incremental gross profit.”

International streamers believe they are already investing heavily in Australian content, and can point to shows such as Netflix’s Heartbreak High reboot, Disney+’s drama The Clearing and Paramount+’s Last King of the Cross as evidence. We have reached out to the main international streamers for comment.

“Not too much to ask”

The SPA also claimed that given current spend was at the A$324.1M ($208.1M) mark, the 20% obligation would only mean an A$17.1M increase. “We think that’s a reasonable ask,” the statement added.

It is anticipated that Australian content spend will fall for the 2023-24 accounting period due to the U.S. writers and actors strikes, a delay in a Location Offset expenditure-based scheme and a streamer commissioning slowdown triggered by the uncertainty over regulation.

The SPA also flagged the global statement on streaming platform regulation that it and 26 other organizations signed in January demanding parity with powerful streaming services.

The joint statement from production bodies from Canada, Australasia, Europe and Latin America called for number of guiding “principles,” the most important of which related to independent IP ownership. Also on the list were demands governments should address how local content is considered, the importance of local stories, financial arrangements, up-skilling and approaches to market failure.

“The Australian screen industry is unanimous in calling for a robust, transparent and incorruptible regulatory model that all Australians can have confidence in and that will take our industry forward, meet the promise to audiences of Revive, and demonstrates an ambition to grow the Australian screen industry as an important future industry for our economy in a screen content-hungry world,” the SPA said today in its submission.

The likes of pubcaster the ABC have called for protections of the Australia’s indie production sector in their submissions to the National Cultural Policy inquiry.

Similar debates around streaming regulations are playing out in countries such as Canada and Ireland.

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