Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter Five
The idea that Australian broadcast media should contain Australian content has
with considerable public reach and cultural significance, it has been a widely held
and control, and contribute to the development of national culture. In the case of
government to secure these goals, as part of the public trust obligations involved
from 1993. The Australian content requirements have involved a mix of overall
197
for the broadcast of particular program types, most notably drama and children’s
the evening ‘prime time’ schedule, on the basis that this is the period with the
largest audience, and thus when locally produced material may have the widest
cultural impact.
has been relatively consistent, although the levels, forms and objectives of
regulation have varied over time. The goal of promoting Australian content has
service (ABC) and the commercial broadcasters from their inception. The
The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 states in the Objects of the Act the necessity
broadcasting services’ (s. 3 (d)) and promoting ‘the role of broadcasting services
television had been a long-standing one. The basic arguments have had majority
support among industry participants since the decision in 1960 to set a 40 per cent
Australian content quota (increased to 45 per cent in 1962 and 50 per cent in
1965). Groups representing the audiovisual production industry had argued, since
the 1963 Vincent Report, that local content requirements placed upon commercial
broadcasters and the cultural dimensions of the medium. The ABT’s Self-
Australian look for television’ was a desirable ideal, but Tribunal members
achieving this goal (ABT 1977: 29). Even the commercial broadcasters
themselves, while rhetorically opposed to quotas per se, have accepted their
on the entry of new competitors are recognised as a quid pro quo for meeting such
generally, are different to those surrounding other areas of media policy such as
media ownership, for two important reasons. First, the ceding of responsibility for
political bipartisanship on the issue of local content regulations, which has also
created the potential for considerable flexibility and autonomy in the policy
process on the part of the responsible regulatory agency. Such autonomy on the
governments from both major political parties to media ownership issues. Media
ownership laws in Australia have been characterised by what Anna Yeatman has
termed executive models of policy, where the scope for policy activism outside of
minimised. By contrast, laws governing media content have, since the early
1970s, been more open to what Yeatman describes as a policy process, where
of different actors [and] policy activism of various kinds is invoked into being’
(Yeatman 1998: 17). Such bureaucratic autonomy arises at a cost, however, since
and access have been treated as ‘second-order’ policy problems (Spurgeon 1997).
Australia is that they have been developed in the context of the social contract in
broadcasting. The social contract has been defined as a policy settlement where
structures are seen as providing a surplus able to be ‘traded off’ for pro-social
programming. Such a policy trade off occurs in a context where the ‘public trust’
industry, public interest and advocacy groups and, in most instances, the
a culture through the development of local drama and other forms of television
national community that results from exposure to national cultural forms. In 1968,
201
know ourselves, and passes on the information to the rest of the world. A
the late 1980s, Gil Appleton would argue that that ‘the shock of self-recognition
... had been the key to the success of Australian programs’ (Appleton 1988: 203).
choice, requirements such as the Australian content quota have their uses for the
Television Broadcasters
Five sets of arguments have been put forward in favour of Australian content
argument for such regulations on the basis of the large cost differential between
producing local programs and importing programs from overseas. It has been
estimated that the average cost of imported programs is in the range of 10-30 per
202
cent of the cost of the equivalent locally produced material (BTCE 1991: 124-
126), and that, in the absence of regulation to guarantee minimum levels of local
purchase and screen imported material. There is the additional but related concern
that the world market for television products provides unfair benefits to television
program producers from the United States, who can export programs at low
marginal costs (close to marginal cost of reproduction), due to the size of their
successful product realises its costs in the North American television market prior
to its export (Hoskins and Mirus 1988; Collins 1990a; O’Regan 1992).
provide regular employment for Australian creative personnel in both on- and off-
screen roles. It had become apparent by the early 1960s that employment
production took place across a range of sectors. For such local film and television
to develop the linkages between the television industry and a series of other
sector (Cunningham 1992; cf. Moran 1985). In this light, arguably the first major
local content decision in Australia came in 1960 with the requirement (later to be
codified as Television Production Standards (TPS) 18 and 19) that no more than
203
until 1990, played a very important role in underwriting all forms of audiovisual
‘television drama production in Australian could not have developed its present
scope and depth without the industrial infrastructure of the advertising industry’
commercial stations to meet the points targets as well as transmission quotas. The
intention has been to ensure that local production is encouraged in areas which are
‘quality’ or to have cultural significance, or which are costlier and/or riskier than
other program types. The flip side has been a desire to minimise reliance upon
televised sport, quiz and game shows, or low-cost studio-based programs in order
The promotion of Australian national culture has been the fourth, and
most significant, force behind calls for Australian content regulations. The view
their own culture, had been put in a number of statements since the 1960s, and has
usually been tied to the development of local content quotas for drama. By the
1980s, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal was arguing that greater national
stations to meet the demand of local audiences for local programming (Appleton
1988). Moreover, this ‘cultural’ argument for Australian content regulations came
controversial.
regulation has strong links to arguments about the role of culture in developing
national citizenship and identity, and the cultural nationalist belief that an
was the condition for social justice and societal development (Turner 1979).
205
Cultural nationalists believed that the lack of a local film and television
and linked this to concerns about American ‘cultural imperialism’ and the
The first three arguments listed above for Australian content regulations -
can be classified as economic or industry policy goals, with only the latter two -
characteristically been upon their cultural significance. Over the course of the
framing of public policy in Australia, and this had an impact on the Australian
Content inquiry.
also by Brown and Cave (1992), Burgin and Molloy (1993) and the Bureau of
206
for market failure, and social regulation, involving the pursuit by government of
Australian content rules ‘have both the economic function of protecting domestic
industry, and the social functions of promoting national pride and cultural values’
(Brown and Cave 1992: 379). Franco Papandrea (1997) draws upon the growing
body of literature dealing with the economics of art and culture, to identify four
1. public good arguments, which propose that the there are collective benefits
services;
derived from the availability of artistic and cultural goods and services that
lack of awareness of the value of artistic and cultural goods and services in
the community;
and services, in order that they can be consumed at a later point in time, or
207
sector, the educative role of the arts and culture, and the movement of
the arts and cultural industries, being particularly concerned that ‘market failure’
arguments for public support of the arts and cultural industries may entail a
combination of paternalism and special pleading to use public revenue for the
1994). For its critics, which include some economists, the analytical bases of
rational choice theory are seen as generating an inherent bias against ‘culture’,
contrast, cultural nationalist perspectives typically take the society or the nation,
rather than the individual, as their analytical point of reference, and frame cultural
the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the debate over Australian content regulations
forms of policy discourse, their associated debate cultures and their distinctive
Inquiry 1983-1989
papers argued that the introduction of the points system for Australian content in
produced material from 68 per cent in 1973-74 to 78 per cent in 1980-81 (ABT
concern that the points system had set compliance levels below those which were
constituting a form of ‘symbolic policy’, where the regulator was seen to enforce
a set of outcomes which would in fact have been achieved in the absence of
One consistent feature of the ABT’s conduct of the inquiry was the strong
relevant to the inquiry. A second, and related, feature of the Australian Content
Inquiry was that the ABT had considerable scope to direct the timing of its
process and the direction of its findings, as governmental scrutiny was not high.
Julie James Bailey, who joined the ABT in 1983 when the inquiry commenced,
was of the view that the inquiry would involve a ‘long learning process’ for
Tribunal members, and that a priority was ‘to get a lot of Background Papers,
because what you could do at the Tribunal was to get a lot of information out’.1
The inquiry was deferred in November 1984 by the appeal by the multinational
advertising organisation Saatchi & Saatchi, challenging the power of the Tribunal
led to an amendment to the Broadcasting and Television Act in July 1985 that
210
ensured the Tribunal was able to set and administer advertising standards as well
as program standards.
The Saatchi & Saatchi appeal provides an interesting case study in how
the media policy activism of the 1970s had transformed the behaviour of the ABT
Mark Armstrong and Ray Watterson came to be Tribunal members in the 1980s,
they brought with them a strong sense of the dangers of regulatory capture by the
broadcasting industry, and a willingness to ‘tilt the playing field’ towards the
orientation in areas which required adjudication through the courts, in the case of
the 1984 Saatchi & Saatchi appeal about the ABT’s powers to set advertising
standards:
The Saatchi & Saatchi appeal ... was all about standards and regulation,
and it went all the way up to the High Court, and it turned out the Tribunal
did not have the power. Now Mark [Armstrong] had always said that he
wasn't sure, and ... he said there was a 60/40 chance the Tribunal did not
have the power, so in fact he was vindicated. Part of the reason [why]
there were, if you look at that period with the Tribunal, far more [legal]
challenges ... is that you would always have two opinions. You'll have the
public interest opinion. We made a decision, I did, and Mark and Ray
[Watterson] did, that we would always take the public interest opinion,
and we could get the thing ironed out in the court. But if you took the
done, then the public can never challenge it in the courts. So you never get
legally clear indications of where the law stands. So it was very much a
decision, and that is why there was so much litigation in that period.2
When the Australian Content Inquiry resumed in January 1986, a call for
titled ‘Seen anything good on telly lately?’, and also placed an advertisement in
several capital city newspapers titled ‘What do you think of Australian programs
programs currently screening, their likes and dislikes, and whether they would
like to see more - and less - of particular program types. By early 1987, the
Tribunal had received 653 responses through this community outreach campaign.
organisations and interest groups with an ongoing interest in policy in the area of
Australian content rules. In contrast to the difficulties faced by the ABT in the
212
regulatory and policy-making roles, the ABT was now developing a more ongoing
and consistent approach to its dealings with the broad range of interest groups and
that included a stress upon information provision and promoting opportunities for
The ABT’s Australian Content Inquiry had seen the consolidation of a pattern that
had emerged in the 1960s, where the production industry representatives and the
groups were also largely consistent with those of the Tribunal. They saw the
primary objective of Australian content standards as cultural, and shared with the
ABT the virtuous circle argument that forms of cultural regulation such as
213
program quotas had brought forth a supply of local television program production,
which had in turn proved popular with local audiences and thus contributed to the
industry, given the diversity of roles and interests and the differing size and
position put forward by organisations and individuals representing the film and
diversity of local content; and a stress upon ‘prime time’ (6.00 pm to 10.00 pm) as
the period in which the operation of effective quotas was most important. Some
quota under the points system (Broad 1987). Others, such as the Film and
Television Institute (WA), the Australian Writers Guild (WA) and the Australian
networking had been introduced (FTI (WA Branch) 1986; AWG (WA Branch)
1986; AWG (Qld Branch) 1986). A consistent feature of the production industry
submissions and contributions was an abiding discontent with the conduct of the
of what was acceptable programming for Australian TV audiences, and even their
ability to threaten the livelihood of producers who gave detailed evidence to the
Tribunal.3
interest and advocacy groups, such as the ‘TV - Make it Australian’ Committee,
Law Centre (CLC). There was a lot of overlap and crossover between these
preparing its submission. The case for Australian content regulations made in the
CLC and ‘TV - Make It Australian’ submissions emphasised the ‘public trust’
for private access to scarce spectrum space; the significant social and cultural role
creative personnel and its reach to large audiences; and the need for regulation to
provide the stability necessary to build a strong local production industry in the
Stations (FACTS) argued against revising the current Australian content standards
on the basis that the commercial TV networks were in fact meeting the revealed
preference of Australian TV viewers for local content, and that the failure of the
Tribunal to update Australian content standards has in fact been ‘a benign neglect
which has served to show that competition, rather than regulatory intervention, is
best qualified to provide the quantity, range and quality of programs that best
accord with the tastes and preferences of the public’ (FACTS 1988: 85). The
FACTS submission also argued that the commercial TV industry was currently
operating at full capacity and at what economists would call ‘normal’ profit levels,
anyway, its members’ preference was for one which maximised network
216
answer given by FACTS is that they would have been responsive to consumer
preferences for such material. The counter-argument, put by the interest groups,
was that they failed to broadcast such material until forced to, at which point
consumer preference for such material was revealed. Another issue raised is the
extent to which broadcasters can increase the amount of local programs in their
schedule and reduce the amount of imported programs, or change the mix of
programs within local and import categories, without there being such an adverse
impact upon profits that it inhibits future investment decisions. This raised the
issue for the Tribunal of acquiring reliable information on the relative costs of
consultant’s report for the Tribunal, released in November 1987, was a detailed
programs across the range of program types, based upon questionnaires and face-
to-face interviews with 200 program production personnel (ABT 1991). The
Table 5.1
Media policy formation has been assessed not only in terms of its outcomes, but
also through the extent to which policy processes are open to participation,
intervention and formal scrutiny. While the Whitlam Labor government (1972-75)
content requirements, critics pointed to its failure to reform and open up the
Tribunal was founded with a strong commitment to open and inclusive processes
formation principles. By the time of the Australian Content Inquiry, the Tribunal
was being criticised as ineffectual, not just by the broadcasting industry and
organisations that had emerged since the 1960s, which drew upon ‘public interest’
The ABT had sought to fashion a role for itself in facilitating and
well as other industry groups such as the film and TV production sector, or
members to make the agency less of what Dunleavy and O’Leary (1987) have
Australian Content Inquiry arose out of a number of related factors. One was the
219
role played by the Tribunal’s licence renewal inquiries. While they were largely
the groups that chose to remain involved in such processes had developed
political lobbying skills and broadened their involvement in media policy issues.
policy formation processes had, in the 1980s, gradually been shifting from
Tribunal’s The Price of Being Australian (ABT 1988) where, of the 178
conference registrants, 11 (6 per cent) were there on the basis of their research
and/or policy roles within their organisations. For Anne Britton, former National
Actors’ Equity had in the late 1980s a principle of ‘spending about 40 per cent of
our resources on policy, or so-called job creation issues’, as part of serving its
members’ interests, since ‘it’s good that actors are interested in working in their
policy process from a ‘public interest’ perspective. The CLC was established in
Centre (PIAC) in media-related activities through the licence renewal process. Its
establishment was driven by the desire of its founding director, Kate Harrison, to
‘public interest’ basis. The CLC could do this by linking on the one hand with the
legal sector and the movements which sought to bring legal advice to the
community, and on the other with the university sector, which could provide a
and copyright laws, the CLC developed into an organisation which could develop
Spurgeon, a researcher at the CLC from 1988 to 1995, observed that the CLC was
seen as ‘professionalising [the] public interest’ when it was launched, since it had
need to have the resources ... the time and skills base to go out and talk to people,
and to convince various bureaucracies that it was worth their while to spend time
with you.’ 7 For Spurgeon, the Australian Content Inquiry was an occasion where
221
which could be used by all parties, meant that ‘we actually had an intelligent
debate, rather than opposition camps just throwing rhetoric at each other, and then
some kind of political decision being handed down, which is how it could have
inquiry process’ and, for an organisation such as the CLC, a ‘scaling up’ of their
involvement.
The other trend which emerged in the late 1980s was the involvement of
Stuart Cunningham was a central figure in this debate, linking engagement with
policy debates such as the Australian Content Inquiry (Cunningham 1992, 1993,
1994). Graeme Turner observed that signs of a sea-change in cultural, media and
and the media industries. Such Centres included the Institute for Cultural Policy
Studies (ICPS), established at Griffith University in 1989, and the Australian Key
Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, funded by the Australian Research Council
as a National Key Centre for Teaching and Research in 1995. For Turner, such
cultural production at the level of policy and planning’ (Turner 1989: 5).
One area in which cultural analysis had influence, albeit indirectly, was in debates
about the use of ‘on-screen indicators’ for Australian content, or the ‘Australian
Look’ controversy. When the ABT released its Draft Proposal for an Australian
the need to regulate for Australian content emanated from the need to preserve an
encourage diversity of program types (ABT 1991b). The Draft Proposal put
broadcast between 6.00 am and midnight over the period of a year, commencing 1
July 1989, with the intention to increase this quota to 60 per cent by 1 July 1994,
with a comparable quota to apply during ‘prime time’, between 6.00 pm and
as well as promoting local drama, the Tribunal proposed a minimum score for
adult drama, children’s drama and diversity programs (which included variety
series, variety specials, social documentary, arts programs and new concepts). The
223
aims of the quota and minimum score systems were to encourage programs that
were:
(d) under Australian creative and financial control, and which ‘showcase
indicators’);
people.
The most contentious elements of the Tribunal’s Draft Proposal were those
that depended upon an ‘Australian Look’ criteria, and its use of ‘on-screen
was a concept that had its origins in the 1977 ABT Self-Regulation Inquiry,
Centre, Film Australia, the Grundy Organisation, Crawfords Productions and the
Screen Producers Association of Australia. Moran (1989) and Given (1989) also
were that the ‘Australian Look’ concept and its indicators were based upon flawed
creativity. It was also argued that the test was incompatible with tests of
interested parties on Australian content, who had also traditionally been its allies
and supporters, the question remains as to why the ABT produced a Draft
Proposal based upon a test that was so at odds with so many of these interests.
Jock Given has noted that a recurring contextual issue was the fear of the
regard for local context. The New Mission: Impossible, produced in Brisbane and
on the Gold Coast was, for Given, the touchstone of these anxieties about global
television:
People looked at it and said that this is what we don’t want to happen. It’s
very difficult to describe, but we’ve got something very concrete in front
Bailey argued that the problem lay to some degree with the unwillingness
come forward and alerted the Tribunal to the debates about defining “Australian”
and participated in the drafting of the final standards’ (Bailey 1994: 70). Bailey’s
argument is, however, disingenuous for three reasons. First, the major critics of
the proposal were not academics at the ‘margins’, but the production industry and
public interest groups that the Tribunal had been in consistent liaison with
throughout the inquiry. Given recalls how, when he commenced with the AFC
where the Broadcasting Tribunal, which I thought would be much lauded by the
film and television production industry, was being reviled for the craziness of this
proposal’.9 Second, the proposal had its critics within the Tribunal itself. Debra
Richards noted that the ‘Australian Look’ proposal came from an attempt by the
When we went out with the ‘Australian look’ - and I must say it was
probably a lot of us who didn’t want to go out with the ‘Australian look’,
particularly among the staff ... our main priority was the ‘cultural
argument’ and trying to put that as our main priority ... So, in an effort, I
think, to push the cultural side of it, there was this proposal for ‘Australian
look’. We had been trying to walk away from that from the time it went
out there, frankly ... there are all the problems that go with that … how do
fantasy, or …does the ‘Australian look’ have to have two kangaroos, three
cultural nationalism that had informed media reform and other related campaigns
in the 1960s and 1970s. Bailey’s claim that academic research in this area was not
many of the key texts putting these arguments (eg. White 1981; Rowse 1985;
Castles et. al. 1988). The very public debates about multiculturalism and
Australian identity in the late 1980s should also have given the Tribunal more
pause than they did about attempting to legislate for an ‘Australian Look’ in
extensive consultations with them over a long period of time, it is unlikely that,
swayed the Tribunal from cultural nationalism. Rather, cultural nationalism had
concern that the loss of rigorous on-screen indicators would mean the
Corporation, captured the spirit of these discussions in his view that they had led
to ‘some degree of confidence that what Australians produce is, ipso facto,
Australian’. 12
The late 1980s marked the period of what Tom O’Regan (1993) has
undertaken by the Qintex, Bond and Westfield groups, who took over the Seven,
Nine and Ten networks in 1987 in response to the changes in media ownership
228
laws in 1986-87, proved to be unsustainable in the wake of the stock market crash
of November 1987. The situation was to worsen for the sector in 1990-91, as it
was faced with continuing high debt levels, rising interest rates, and a sharp fall in
the rate of growth in advertising revenues from 15 per cent to 6 per cent, leading
Table 5.2
1987-88 3.9
1988-89 0.3
1989-90 -0.2
1990-91 -2.6
quota to 50 per cent. The Final Draft Proposal retained the combined quota/point
increased to 50 per cent by the fourth year of operation, and to later increase to 60
per cent by the sixth year of operation. In spite of a dissenting view within the
Tribunal presented by Julie James Bailey (Bailey in ABT 1991c: 38), the
229
Tribunal’s majority view was that industry profitability and viability were the
primary concerns, and that the meeting of local content quotas was a positive
perhaps the most penetrating inquiry into their conduct, the commercial free-to-air
broadcasters were able to reach a familiar quid pro quo with the regulators, the
production sector and interest groups: the delivery of prescribed levels of local
Conclusion
place in the context of some very significant shifts in how media reform
movements organised around the policy process, as well as in the ways in which
of concerns raised in the licence renewal hearings, the Australian Content inquiry
was focused around the particular issue of the amount of locally produced
inquiry also supported the ongoing involvement of organised advocacy and public
interest groups, and in this way contributed to what Christina Spurgeon (1997)
230
has described as the ‘professionalisation of the public interest’ in the 1980s, that
was in turn facilitated by the ABT as a regulatory agency. The inquiry marks an
important case study in what Anna Yeatman (1999) has referred to as ‘activism in
the policy process’, particularly in the ways in which alliances developed between
policy ‘insiders’ in the regulatory agencies and ‘outsiders’ in the advocacy and
working in these fields sought to align their activism to the activities of policy-
of ‘on-screen indicators’.
1
Interview with Julie James Bailey, 10 July 1995.
2
Ibid.
3
Record of meeting between the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal and representatives from industry organisations,
Melbourne, 29 July 1987. See also SPAA, Submission DOC009, op. cit.
4
Britton observes that at this time ‘TV - Make it Australian’ was ‘largely spearheaded by Actors Equity’.
Interview with Anne Britton, 28 September 1998.
5
Ibid.
6
Interview with Dr. Christina Spurgeon, Lecturer in Media Studies, Queensland University of Technology, 28
October 1997.
7
Ibid.
8
Interview with Jock Given, Director, Communications Law Centre, 18 November 1997. On The New Mission:
Impossible, see Miller (1998).
9
Given ibid.
10
Interview with Debra Richards, Director, Program Services, Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, 19 November
1997.
11
Ms J. James-Bailey, Member, ABT. in Commonwealth of Australia, Australian Content Proposals for
Commercial Television, Transcript of Proceedings, Perth, 8 February 1989.
12
Mr Kim Williams, Chairman, Australian Film Finance Corporation, in Commonwealth of Australia, Australian
Content Proposals for Commercial Television, Transcript of Proceedings, Sydney, 9 February 1989.