COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Official Committee Hansard SENATE LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION COMMITTEE Reference: Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment Bill 1998 and related bill TUESDAY, 13 APRIL 1999 SYDNEY BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE INTERNET The Proof and Official Hansard transcripts of Senate committee hearings, some House of Representatives committee hearings and some joint committee hearings are available on the Internet. Some House of Representatives committees and some joint committees make available only Official Hansard transcripts. The Internet address is: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard SENATE LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL LEGISLATION COMMITTEE Tuesday, 13 April 1999 Members: Senator Payne (Chair), Senators Coonan, Cooney, McKiernan, O’Chee and Stott Despoja Participating members: Senators Abetz, Bartlett, Bolkus, Brown, Colston, Faulkner, Harradine and Margetts Senators in attendance: Senators Payne and Cooney Terms of reference for the inquiry: Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment Bill 1998 Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Charges Bill 1998 WITNESSES MACKINTOSH, Ms Patricia, Manager, Corporate Services, Australian Film, Television and Radio School ............................................. 135 SAUNDERS, Ms Ruth, Student Film and Video Distribution Manager, Australian Film, Television and Radio School ..................................... 135 BECKER, Mr Richard Anthony Llewellyn, President, Australian Independent Distributors Association ......................................... 138 GOODER, Mr Mark, Head, Film Division, REP Film Distributors .......... 138 SIMES, Mrs Megan Mary Barry, Chief Executive, Australian Visual Software Distributors Association ......................................... 146 JONES, Ms Ruth Alexandra, Chief Executive, Australian Film Institute .......155 VAUGHAN, Mr Daniel John, Manager, Events and Promotions, Australian Film Institute .....................................................155 BLADWELL, Mr Stephen Stanley, Partner, Ernst and Young; Representative, Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, Village Roadshow and Fox Film Distributors ..................................................165 YOUNG, Mr Michael Stanley, Director, Ernst and Young; Representative, Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, Village Roadshow and Fox Film Distributors ..................................................165 WILSON, Miss Roslyn Margaret, General Manager and Director, Roadshow Entertainment, Village Roadshow ..................................165 BLIGHT, Ms Rosemary Anne, Company Director, R.B.Films Pty Ltd .........177 McEWEN, Ms Melissa Louise, Research and Policy Manager, Screen Producers Association of Australia ..........................................177 HOLMES, Mr Geoffrey David, Principal Legal Officer, Attorney-General’s Department ...................................................186 REABURN, Mr Norman, Deputy Secretary, Attorney-General’s Department ....186 WEBB, Mr Simon, Acting Deputy Director, Office of Film and Literature Classifica- tion .........................................................186 Tuesday, 13 April 1999 SENATE—Legislation L&C 135 Committee met at 9.07 a.m. MACKINTOSH, Ms Patricia, Manager, Corporate Services, Australian Film, Television and Radio School SAUNDERS, Ms Ruth, Student Film and Video Distribution Manager, Australian Film, Television and Radio School CHAIR—On 24 March 1999, the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment Bill 1998 and the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Charges Bill 1998 were referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 29 March 1999. Due to time constraints and other reporting requirements, the committee lodged an interim report on 29 March and received an extension to report by 19 April. I welcome Ms Ruth Saunders and Ms Pat Mackintosh from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. You have lodged submission No. 6 with the committee which I note for the record has been released for publication. Do you wish to make any amendments or alterations to that submission? Ms Mackintosh—No, we do not wish to make any amendments or alterations. CHAIR—I now invite you to make a short opening statement, at the conclusion of which I will invite Senator Cooney to ask questions. Ms Mackintosh—I will make this statement as short as I can. Basically what we are saying as a training organisation in this cultural field is that section 32 of the amendment legislation which will become subsection 91(1) of the new act, if it is passed, is the section which the school supports because, one, it ideally suits its situation and, two, we think it is a good continuation of past practices where the training nature of our organisation is recognised and also the cultural nature rather than the commercial nature of the films that it produces is recognised. CHAIR—Ms Saunders, do you wish to add anything? Ms Saunders—No. I would support that. Senator COONEY—Let me clarify this. You are quite happy with the bill as it is? Ms Mackintosh—Yes, we are. We are saying that we think section 91(1) suits our situation. Senator COONEY—You never thought of raising any objections to the bill at all? Ms Mackintosh—No. We would actually hate to see that particular section altered. I guess that is our real concern. Senator COONEY—Have you looked at the bill that is the subject of today’s discussion, and are you happy that that does not change your situation at all? Ms Mackintosh—Yes. Senator COONEY—Have you had legal advice on that? Ms Mackintosh—We have received advice on it, yes, and we have talked to our department as well. CHAIR—To DOCITA? Ms Mackintosh—Yes. Senator COONEY—I don’t think there is much point in persisting. LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL L&C 136 SENATE—Legislation Tuesday, 13 April 1999 CHAIR—I would like to ask whether you are aware of some of the criticisms of the bill, which are being made in the community and in various parts of the sector, I suppose. Do you have any comment to make on some of those? The Australian Film Institute and a number of other groups are being critical about the effect of Australian short films particularly. I would be interested in your perspective on that. Ms Mackintosh—All of our product is short film, certainly. Any further imposts on those products I guess will raise some concerns. We put our concerns into the submission. Extra imposts will be of concern, but we are certainly not objecting to those as such. CHAIR—Do you have in your work at the school any contact with distributors, any views about the impact on them? Ms Mackintosh—The main distributor with whom we work is AFI Distribution, which distributes all of our films. We are dealing with students films which are of a very short length. They can be from four minutes. A long film for us would be one of about 25 minutes. So you might say that we are almost a mini-market of our own. The main distributor within Australia is AFI Distribution. Overseas we use a number of distributors, but our so-called overseas distribution is more about getting our films into film festivals, which are not income producers as such, or they are very minimal income producers. They are more to promote the school and its students. Ruth, who are the other distributors that we deal with in Australia? Ms Saunders—We deal only with AFI. We occasionally deal directly with an exhibitor, a cinema, which would mostly be one of the independent ones like the Dendy or the Palace. What we have said to them in the past is, ‘If you take this film on as a commercial venture, then we rely on you to go through the classification process as a commercial film’—if they choose to do that. They may or may not feel that it is worth it in terms of their financial income from it. Most of our films—I would say 99 per cent—were screened in a cultural sense either at a film festival, in a program of short films or in programs that support the school in showing off the work of the graduates for our annual recruitment tour. The number of films that have actually had a theatrical, commercial release in the past 20 years, I think, would be one film. CHAIR—So Tropfest is your— Ms Saunders—No, not Tropfest. The Dendy awards are awarded at the Sydney Film Festival; the AFI awards, Melbourne. Tropfest, possibly, but it is a different kind of thing. Locally and internationally, film festivals are probably 60, 70 or 80 per cent about distribution. Senator COONEY—To follow on from what the chair was saying: in your submission, the fifth dot point says: If a cinema wants to screen an AFTRS film, the exhibitor is asked to arrange and pay the classification charges. Clearly this is a major disincentive to them. Screening a short film with a feature adds nothing to the income produced by that screen and costs the exhibitor money. Even if the exhibitor offers no payment to the maker of the short film (as is usually the case), he is still out-of-pocket and the film-maker has generated no income for him/herself. This situation is not conducive to encouraging a healthy Australian screen culture—the general public is deprived of the chance to see the work of new film- makers and taxpayers are unable to see the result of the taxes that are put into training these new film- makers. When I read that originally, that seemed to indicate some concern, but you have not got any concern about that now? Ms Mackintosh—These are the concerns of the distributors