Industry Perspectives: Out of the Frying Pan: Screen Australia and the Producer Offset

In October 2020, the Australian Government announced that the Producer Offset, a subsidy long relied upon for getting Australian features off the ground, would be slashed from 40 to 30 per cent, a move that carried potentially catastrophic effects for the future of local film production. Although a last-minute lobbying campaign prompted that decision to be reversed, the planned reduction was merely the latest in a long sequence of manoeuvres to internationalise and commercialise the industry – a trend that has reduced the space for culturally significant Australian cinema, Glenda Hambly argues.

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