)
Industry body Screen Producers Australia (SPA) has welcomed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's firm stance on local content rules enshrined in a trade deal between Australia and the USA, as a more antagonistic trade environment opens the door for pushback against anything that protects Australian business and culture.
In a press conference after US President Donald Trump's announcement of new tariffs worldwide, including a 10 per cent tariff on Australian goods, Albanese reiterated support for rules on streaming services that ensure "Australian stories stay on Australian screens".
"The hundreds of small screen businesses and the thousands of their employees and partners across a range of creative sectors will welcome this statement by the Prime Minister," says SPA CEO Matthew Deaner.
"It signals the ongoing solid support for our creative industries and the importance of local content rules to Australia’s cultural sovereignty."
He says that in upending trade conventions, the US government has given the opponents of these rules a big boost.
"I know that the Australian Government has been under enormous pressure from the USA on this front, amply evident from the aggressive position of the Motion Picture Association, which has sought to resist, delay, and read down the local content rules agreed to in the 2004 Australia-US Free Trade Agreement," says Deaner.
"This was also an attempt to force a back down on the commitment made to us and the Australian public in our National Cultural Policy Revive, as well as the Coalition’s position when it was last in Government."
Deaner emphasises that local content rules have served Australian audiences very well ever since they were first introduced for television in 1961.
"Without them, as a small, English-language nation, we would have had little ability or capacity to develop our own local industry and to compete on commercial terms with the scale and dominance of the massive USA and UK industries," he says.
"SPA has long advocated for local content rules so that our screen stories are available to our audiences as they move to streaming platforms.
"Because of the delay in putting these rules into place, right now, finding our own screen stories is getting harder and harder, and that’s not a good situation.
"It is SPA’s highest priority to secure a robust regulatory framework on streaming platforms, and we will continue our fierce advocacy for our industry until this is done."
)
