Labor’s abject surrender to US-owned tech giants means we will be seeing fewer Australian stories on our screens. And if history is any guide, the consequences for Australia’s screen industry and culture are devastating.
We’ve been here before. Way back in the infancy of the movie business, Australia was a world leader, producing some of the first feature films. In the silent era, the local industry was booming. But all of this came to an abrupt halt when Hollywood began flooding the market with cheap imported films, paying backhanders to the local theatre chains and forcing Australian productions off the screen. These dodgy practices led to the establishment of a royal commission in 1927, with widespread calls for a quota to ensure Australian stories could be seen in cinemas.
