Screen Producers Australia has lodged a 22-recommendation submission to the Australian authorities’s Nationwide Cultural Coverage session, placing the market energy of streaming platforms over unbiased producers on the middle of its push for structural reform.
The physique’s submission argues that the shift to digital streaming has basically altered commissioning practices, leaving small and medium-sized manufacturing companies uncovered to contract phrases that threaten long-term sector sustainability. SPA is urgent for a “fairness” requirement to be embedded in Australian display regulation – whether or not by means of a terms-of-trade mannequin or as a situation of what qualifies as “Australian” content material beneath home content material regimes.
“SPA has tried every avenue available to bring this untenable situation to the Government’s attention as an area of urgent regulatory need, including this year, recourse to the ACCC,” SPA CEO Matthew Deaner stated. “While these pressures are being acknowledged in other sectors through the News Media Bargaining Incentive and the ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry Report, SPA is pressing for a better understanding from Government about the impact of these platforms on independent screen production in Australia.”
The submission identifies three rules that ought to govern commissioning relationships: good religion negotiations – together with affordable timeframes and a willingness to fluctuate phrases for mutual profit; truthful worth for mental property, with business success factored into extensions and new-season offers; and transparency, with commissioners required to share information on viewership, viewers attain and business efficiency.
“It is no longer the situation in which Australian SME screen businesses can negotiate commissioning contracts on the fair and reasonable terms that enable them to operate sustainably,” Deaner stated.
SPA acknowledged latest progress on native content material obligations for streaming platforms however characterised them as addressing solely the opening section of a extra advanced set of issues. The submission raises particular alarm about what it calls “Offset Passthrough Arrangements” – a follow whereby some streaming suppliers construction financing to successfully get well the worth of the Producer Offset from producers, diluting their actual content material spend dedication from the mandated 10% to round 7–8% in follow.
The submission attracts a distinction between tax incentives, which it describes as beneficiant, and the absence of regulatory motion on structural market imbalances – together with, it notes, with government-owned broadcasters. SPA’s membership represents greater than 800 manufacturing companies driving over AUD3 billion ($2.1 billion) in annual manufacturing exercise from the unbiased sector.
Among the many most placing information factors within the submission is the state of youngsters’s content material: new Australian kids’s programming on business free-to-air tv has collapsed from 391 hours earlier than deregulation to only 48 hours in 2024, whereas kids’s drama has fallen from 98 hours to 10. On streaming providers, Australian kids’s content material accounted for lower than 3% of the overall hours of Australian content material obtainable throughout the 5 main SVOD platforms. The submission additionally cites Display screen Australia information displaying Australian movies captured simply 2.6% of the native field workplace in 2025.
The submission additionally flags progress in First Nations display storytelling, with the variety of First Nations majority-owned companies amongst SPA’s membership rising to 27 from 18 over the previous 4 years, spanning genres from science fiction and comedy to thriller and documentary. Different suggestions cowl an export technique evaluate – noting that Australia imports eight {dollars} of cultural merchandise for each greenback it exports – new and modernized co-production agreements, and the pressing legislating of two already-announced however still-unlegislated Producer Offset reforms.
“With the right policy settings that update our thinking and recognize some tough realities, our industry could once again witness a renaissance in Australian screen storytelling,” Deaner stated.
