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Introduction
This explainer provides an overview of why Australian-made media, particularly film, drama series, documentary and children’s content, is important. Since the 1970s, the Australian government has ensured local audiences have access to Australian films, drama series, documentaries and children’s programs because of the important social and cultural roles they play in representing and reflecting Australians’ lives.
Policy makers ensure these forms of content are made by using different types of policies including: Australian content quotas, direct funding schemes, tax rebates and support of public service broadcasters (the ABC and SBS). We examine the effectiveness of these policies now that digital technologies such as the Internet have changed how Australians access media and what they can access. This explainer concludes by offering some solutions to ensure continued availability of new Australian screen content.
Key takeaways
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KEY INFORMATION
The Australian Government uses three key policy levers to ensure production of a range of Australian drama, movies, documentaries and children’s programs. The government does this because of the perceived important role of these forms of screen content in protecting and developing national identity and socialising Australian audiences into their national cultural context, with the aim of uniting Australia’s dispersed, diverse population. Governments also recognise the economic benefits of a thriving Australian screen production sector, including job creation and international exports. Historically though, supports for local content were intended to primarily serve the interests of the Australian community rather than the production sector.
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Three main policy levers are available to governments to support local screen content:
Using these policy levers is justified for two key reasons:
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1 | Local content obligations on broadcasters
Commercial broadcasters make use of a public good – broadcasting spectrum – to attract the attention of viewers that they sell to advertisers, thereby earning substantial revenue from their access. The government has always limited the commercial broadcast licenses available to three, protecting Channels Seven, Nine and Ten from competition in the form of new market entrants. In return they require commercial broadcasters to do more than simply schedule the cheapest programming.
The most significant policy making in this area began for broadcast television in the 1960s when Australian drama made up only one percent of commercial television’s total broadcast hours. The government needed to create rules to make sure commercial broadcasters offered Australian drama as well as news and light entertainment instead of importing all drama from the UK and US. Policy in this era aimed primarily to create demand for Australian drama with cultural and social value that would in turn support the establishment of a drama production sector.
From the late 1960s, commercial television broadcasters were required to fill a percentage of their schedules with Australian content. Special subquotas were also created for drama, documentary and children’s programs that were costly relative to the commercial revenue they could attract. Subquotas made sure each broadcaster commissioned around 100 hours per year of new Australian drama and 32 hours a year of new children’s drama by the 1980s.
In 2025 commercial broadcasters are still required to have 55% Australian content on their main channels but these rules do not apply to their multi channels. The government removed broadcasters’ children’s and documentary subquotas in 2021 and significantly watered down their drama obligations at the same time.
This means that most of the Australian content that broadcasters now use to fill local quotas is made up of news, sport and reality entertainment plus long running soaps like Neighbours and Home and Away.
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Commercial broadcasters’ hours of adult drama dropped from 520 in 1999 to 116 hours in 2023, a decline of 48%. Their expenditure on drama has also fallen: commercial broadcaster expenditure on drama decreased from $222.5m in 2002-03 (14% of all program expenditure) to $71.7m in 2021-22 (3%) (Australian Television Drama’s Uncertain Future). |
2 | Direct and indirect funding schemes
During the 1970s the government attempted to rebuild the Australian film industry including to make available a range of funding supports administered by agencies such as the Australian Film Commission. In 1981 the government introduced the 10BA scheme for Australian film, mini-series and telemovies which gave generous tax breaks to anyone who invested in them. In 2008 the government established Screen Australia through the amalgamation of three separate national screen agencies. Screen Australia combined film and television drama support into one organisation for the first time.
Since the start of the 2000s, the goals of industry sector support have overtaken the cultural aims of government funding as government has pushed an agenda of sector expansion and growth through internationalisation. This means many screen stories produced in Australia are intended primarily for audiences outside Australia. Moreover, changes in media businesses, particularly the financial decline of commercial broadcasters, have made it much more difficult to achieve cultural value and industry sector supports through the same policy levers. This is largely because commercial broadcasters now commission far few hours of Australian drama outside of soaps – only nine hours in 2023/24.
Since 2007, government supports for film and drama production have included the Producer Offset which replaced 10BA; it is currently set at 30% of qualifying series budgets and 40% for film. The Producer Offset was designed to support Australian content while a second subsidy, the Location Offset, offered cost rebates to foreign productions shooting in Australia.
Productions have to pass a Significant Australian Content or “SAC” test to be eligible for the Producer Offset. This test is meant to deliver cultural value to Australians, but it is mainly a ‘passport’ test: if a drama or movie is made under Australian creative control and filmed mainly in Australia, it is likely to pass the SAC test, even for a movie like Elvis that is set in the US (Producer Offset recipients are kept secret).
In 2024, Parliament expanded and uncapped the Location Offset which now refunds 30% of qualifying production expenditures for screen projects over $20 million ($1.5m per hour for series) produced in Australia. The Location Offset has no cultural test and is a purely economic measure to attract international productions to Australia.
These supports, which are funded by Australian taxpayers, are returned as rebates to production companies, even when a production has been fully funded from international sources. Both supports are uncapped and their costs are increasing rapidly even though hours of Australian drama have been falling since 2001.
Most government supports do not require cultural value to Australians as part of their criteria. Only the green segments of the figures, direct funding, considers social and cultural value. In theory, the Producer Offset does so as well, but its criteria allow country of production and Australian staffing to suffice. See Australian Television Drama’s Uncertain Future for more detailed analysis.
3 | Support for public service media
The ABC is primarily funded by the Australian government. It is bound by its Charter to provide programs “that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community”. The ABC sources all its drama needs externally from the production sector. It does not operate with any formalised Australian content quotas, although it is now the most important source of funding for Australian drama and children’s programs made freely available to local audience. The government also funds the SBS, although Australia’s multicultural broadcaster derives about a third of its funding from advertising. It commissions much lower levels of Australian content than the ABC as befits its multicultural remit.
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[The ABC] is bound by its Charter to provide programs “that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community”. |
4 | Solutions
- Cultural and economic policy in the sector must be approached separately. Previous conditions that centered commercial broadcasters allowed policy in the sector to support both goals but the changed conditions of the twenty-first century have eroded this possibility.
- Economic supports need to be weighed against other ways to spend funds (healthcare, education, infrastructure). Developing and sustaining a fit-for-purpose sector is likely to deliver more for all Australians than chasing growth given that today’s incentives do little to secure tomorrow’s productions.
- Cultural policy must be tuned for a context in which commercial screen products are made for global audiences. Funding and metrics need to be tied to measures of cultural and public value rather than commercial value.
References and Further Reading
Lotz, A., & Potter, A. (2020, June 11). TV has Changed, So Must the Way We Support Local Content. The Conversation.
Lotz, A., & Potter, A. (2021, March 17). How Local Content Rules on Streamers Could Seriously Backfire. The Conversation.
Lotz, A., & Potter, A. (2021, August 24). Fewer Episodes, More Foreign Owners: The Incredible Shrinking of Australian TV Drama. The Conversation.
Lotz, A., Potter, A., McCutcheon, M., Sanson, K., & Eklund, O. (2021). Australian Television Drama Index, 1999-2019 – Working Paper. QUT Digital Media Research Centre.
Lotz, A., Potter, A., McCutcheon, M., & Sanson, K. (2024). Australian Television Drama’s Uncertain Future: How Cultural Policy is Failing Australians – Report. QUT Digital Media Research Centre.