Add Category
Australian actor and producer Bryan Brown AM has used his National Press Club address to call for an Australian content quota at streaming services that run their businesses locally.
The federal government announced in January that major streaming services such as Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime would be required to invest revenue in the production of local content from mid-2024.
Brown said other countries such as Canada and France had already legislated that revenue that streaming companies got from their countries must funnelled into local production.
He said the same should be done in Australia, and the stories needed to be specifically Australian.
"I mean Australian stories, not stories filmed in Australia with American accents," Brown told the press club.
"That is a cultural death."
Brown has backed the 20 per cent figure the industry has been pushing for and that the government intends to put into law.
"A 20 per cent reinvestment obligation, complemented by strong and sound IP arrangements, would help secure the future of our industry and keep it vibrant," Brown said.
"The streaming companies will fight hard to not legislate. They are a business.
"And we must fight just as hard because this is for our culture."
Brown posed a rhetorical question about why Australians knew so much about other countries, pointing out that countries such as the United States exported their art around the world, strengthening their national identity.
"If our ability to present ourselves on film is taken away, we will become unsure of ourselves, in awe of others and less as a people," Brown said.
"A thriving film and television industry presents who we are to the world."
He said there was a time when it was more about moving money around than making good films.
"We lost our way somewhat, but we kept producing," Brown said.
"Now we have an offset, a tax offset for Australian film, a 40 per cent tax rebate on the budget of the film.
"We nearly lost that in 2021. There was a move to reduce that to 30 per cent. The government announced additional support for offshore production."
He said the idea was to bring the Australian offset in line with the US one at 30 per cent, encouraging Hollywood movies to be filmed in Australia.
"And our film industry, the Australian film industry, the industry that told Australian [stories] was to pay for that increase in offshore production, robbing Crocodile Dundee to pay for Forrest Gump."
He said economically it made sense to film overseas movies in Australia because it created work opportunities locally, but he was relieved the government of the time listened to reason.
"Offshore production is exactly that — offshore, with its allegiance offshore," he said.
Brown said governments of both persuasions had been receptive to the arts.
"Every five years we have to come down here, knock on the door of a prime minister and go, 'Hey, it is the arts,'" he said.
"It is about our culture, it is about who we are, what we aim for as people, and they get it. They know that … do I blame the American streamers for doing American stuff? Not at all. They want their culture up there, but we're saying, fellas, you are getting our money, we want to tell our stories."
Brown started his speech by cataloguing his 40-year career, which has seen him amass more than 90 film and television credits including Breaker Morant, Two Hands, Sweet Country, Cactus, Australia and Red Dog to name a few.
He painted a picture of an unlikely rise to celluloid fame.
"I'm a Westie," he said.
"Born and raised in the western suburbs of Sydney by my mother in a housing commission house".
Brown said he left Australia for England in 1972 to become an actor because he noticed Australian actors were mostly doing English and American plays with English and American accents.
"It seemed pretty silly to do that in Australia, so I went to England to do it first-hand," he quipped.