Screen Australia's 2022-23 annual report buried the interesting number on page forty-seven

Screen Australia released its 2022-23 annual report in September, and the headline number was $2.1 billion in total production activity. This is a record. The press release said so. Several trade outlets repeated the figure with appropriate enthusiasm. What the press release did not emphasise, and what most coverage did not mention, was that the domestic share of that $2.1 billion was 28 per cent. The rest was international production using Australian crews, Australian facilities, and Australian tax incentives to make content that was not Australian in origin, ownership, or creative direction.

That 28 per cent figure appears on page 47 of the annual report, in a section titled “Australian screen production.” It is not hidden. It is not redacted. It is simply not the number that anyone chose to lead with, because $2.1 billion sounds like an industry thriving and 28 per cent sounds like an industry servicing someone else’s content.

The headline and the footnote

Total production expenditure of $2.1 billion represents a genuine increase over the previous year. The industry is busy. Stages are booked. Crews are employed. The Location Offset and the PDV Offset continue to attract international productions that spend heavily in Australia. Marvel, Disney, and various streaming platforms have all used Australian facilities in the reporting period. This spending is real, and the employment it generates is real, and nobody disputes either of those facts.

The question is what the spending produces beyond employment. An Australian grip working on a Marvel film in Sydney is employed. That grip is earning a wage, paying tax, developing skills, and contributing to an industry ecosystem. What that grip is not doing is working on an Australian story. The production will not appear on Australian screens as Australian content. It will not contribute to the cultural conversation about what Australia is, who lives here, or what stories this country tells about itself. It is work. It is not culture. Both matter, but they are not the same thing, and the annual report’s headline treatment conflates them.

What 28 per cent buys

The domestic production spend of approximately $588 million funded a combination of feature films, television drama, documentary, and children’s content. Within that figure, feature film production was $195 million across 38 titles. Television drama production was $280 million. Documentary was $113 million. These numbers are not catastrophic. They are also not growing. Adjusted for inflation, domestic production spend has been roughly flat since 2018-19, while international production spend has more than doubled.

The flat domestic spend means that the number of Australian-originated productions has not meaningfully increased despite the total industry activity hitting a record. The pipeline of Australian stories reaching screens is approximately the same size it was five years ago. The pipeline of international productions using Australia as a location and labour market has expanded significantly. The industry is growing, but the growth is in service work, not origination.

The talent pipeline question

This is where the numbers connect to something that the annual report does not quantify but that producers and writers discuss constantly: the talent pipeline. When the majority of production activity is international service work, the opportunities for Australian writers, directors, and producers to develop original material are constrained. A camera operator can work on a Marvel film and an Australian independent feature and develop the same technical skills on both. A writer cannot. A director cannot. A producer cannot. The creative skills required to originate a project are different from the skills required to execute someone else’s project, and they can only be developed by originating projects.

Screen Australia’s own development funding tells part of this story. The agency funded 142 projects in development during the reporting period. Of those, a fraction will proceed to production. Of those that proceed, a fraction will reach audiences. The funnel is narrow, and it has not widened despite the record headline numbers.

What page 47 actually says

The data on page 47 breaks down production activity by type and by origin. It shows that international productions accounted for $1.52 billion of the $2.1 billion total. It shows that the Location Offset, which incentivises international productions to shoot in Australia, was the single largest driver of production expenditure growth. It shows that the PDV Offset, which incentivises post-production and visual effects work, contributed a further $240 million in international activity.

These offsets are policy decisions. They represent the Australian government’s choice to subsidise international productions in exchange for employment and infrastructure development. The policy has achieved its stated goals: employment is up, facilities are at capacity, and Australia is competitive internationally as a production destination. Whether the policy has achieved anything beyond its stated goals is the question that the annual report raises without answering.

The number nobody put in the headline

Twenty-eight per cent. That is the share of the record-breaking total that was Australian content. The other 72 per cent was work performed by Australians on behalf of international content owners, funded by Australian tax incentives, using Australian infrastructure. The industry is thriving by one measure and treading water by another, and the measure you choose depends on whether you think the purpose of a national screen industry is to employ people or to tell stories. It is obviously both. But $2.1 billion in the headline and 28 per cent on page 47 suggests that the balance has shifted, and that nobody in a position to correct it is particularly interested in saying so out loud.