Updated: Lush House appealed in Federal Court
Screen Australia has appealed a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that television series Lush House is a documentary. The AAT decision, if it stands, would result in the series being eligible to claim the 20% producer offset.
Lush House, an Essential Media and Entertainment program had previously been determined by Screen Australia to be infotainment, not documentary, discounting it from offset eligibility.
For the purposes of the Producer Offset, what is, and isn’t a documentary is significant for the screen production sector and for Screen Australia as the film authority under the Tax Act.
Screen Australia’s Chief Executive Officer, Ruth Harley, said: “This is the first case concerning the definition of documentary and we believe it is important to differentiate between documentary and lifestyle/infotainment programming. For this reason it is necessary to appeal the AAT decision.”
“It is necessary” ?
No. This statement is false. It’s also misleading and deceptive.
The AAT decision is a thorough examination of the issue – and interestingly it was done by someone with more practical experience of the working industry than most people at Screen Australia have.
It’s not necessary.
Screen Australia could have the dignity and the intelligence to recognise a thorough, independent analysis and go along with it. Unfortunately the attitude of the senior team in Scr-oz is an arrogant presumption that they know better – despite a large amount of evidence to the contrary.
They forget that the Producer Offset was not designed by Screen Australia, and is not there to support the personal biases of Scr-oz executives. The definition of documentary the Offset uses has been the basis of the television content quotas for years. If it was a problem, the government had the chance to change it when it made the law putting the offset in place.
If it is a problem now, the government can make that clear by legislating a different definition.
The little Scr-oz clique has decided it’s better or smarter than the government and the ACMA.
What, exactly would be wrong with accepting the judgment of an independent authority (comment edited for legal reasons)?
Even if a few other programs like Lush House that aren’t – according to the narrow views of Scr-oz – as culturally valuable as their more pure idea of ‘documentary’ get the offset, how much would it cost? We can be certain it would not cost the Australian taxpayer as much as some of Screen Australia’s (comment edited) decisions for its feature pals – Knowing? Accidents Happen?
Where was Screen Australia in those debates? If they were only to apply the actual, existing law a bit more faithfully they’d save the government – and Australian taxpayers – much much more in one decision knocking back a US show (that would be eligible instead for the location and post offsets) than they will in years of using the documentary definition that applies now to free-to-air television.
Ruth Harley needs to give a much better account than her dissembling “it is necessary” for why she had put such a high priority on opposing a small level of assistance to independent producers making Australian television.
[comment amended for legal reasons]