Allegra Spender

by leave—I move amendments (1) and (3) to (5), as circulated in my name, together:

(1) Schedule 1, item 3, page 7 (line 18), after "nil expenditure", insert "but does not include any amount which may be subsequently recouped via the refund of part or all of a tax rebate on the program through any producer offset scheme".

(2) Schedule 1, item 3, page 23 (after line 34), after subsection 121FZN(2), insert:

(2A) However, the service's total program expenditure for Australia for the relevant year does not include expenditure incurred by the provider or providers of the service in the relevant year in commissioning an Australian screen business to produce an eligible Australian program unless, under the relevant agreement with the Australian screen business, the ancillary or secondary rights are all times retained under the ownership and control of the Australian screen business and the primary licensing rights revert to the Australian screen business after a period of 3 years, or 5 years if the program has been commissioned for a subsequent season.

(3) Schedule 1, item 3, page 24 (line 32), after "report", insert "disaggregated by subgenre".

(4) Schedule 1, item 3, page 25 (after line 3), after subsection 121FZO(1), insert:

(1A) The report must include the following information about each subgenre included in the report:

(a) the number of commissioned titles;

(b) the total production expenditure incurred in Australia;

(c) the number of hours of content produced;

(d) whether the content qualifies as "Australian content" under the National Classification Code or ACMA guidelines;

(e) the release dates and platform availability within Australia.

(1B) For the purposes of this section, each of the following is an example of a subgenre:

(a) scripted drama;

(b) documentary;

(c) children's programming;

(d) comedy;

(e) animation;

(f) reality and factual entertainment.

(5) Schedule 1, item 3, page 25 (after line 7), at the end of section 121FZO, add:

(3) As soon as practicable after receiving a report under subsection (1), the ACMA must:

(a) publish a copy of the report on its website; and

(b) give a copy of report to the Minister.

(4) The Minister must cause a copy of the report to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the Minister receives the report.

As I outlined in my speech on the second reading of this bill, the Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video On Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025, screen content quotas for subscription video-on-demand services are long overdue. They're essential to ensuring Australians stories continue to be told. However, this bill does not go far enough to support and sustain the screen industry.

For this reason, I am moving some amendments which seek to address the loopholes that I identified earlier. These amendments are practical, targeted and designed to uphold integrity in the system. First, I will talk about the producer offset amendment. Producer offsets are government funded tax offsets covering 30 per cent of production costs. Although intended to support production companies and independent producers, a growing trend, particularly with streamers like Netflix, is for the streaming services to cashflow productions on the condition that the offset is later handed back to them. Under the current bill, the value of this offset can be counted as part of qualifying expenditure that streaming services must spend on Australian content. This means taxpayer money intended for the independent sector is treated as though it is the streamer's own investment even when the streamer is not actually contributing to these funds.

My amendment would exclude the value of the producer offset from qualifying Australian expenditure until streaming services genuinely spend more of their own money on Australian productions, particularly in cases where they currently can recoup part of the production costs through the offset, and avoid unnecessary complexity as offset arrangements are made at the contract stage and obligations are acquitted over a three-year period. This is a simple measure to ensure public money is not counted twice and that the purpose of the producer offset is preserved.

I think this is important. The producer offset is a piece of tax legislation I fought for very strongly, but I recognise that these offsets are expensive for the Australian taxpayer. This is money that the Australian taxpayer puts in. I think it really goes contrary to the intention of this bill, which is to get overseas platforms to invest in Australian content, to allow them to include taxpayer money in their Australian investment because it is demonstrably clear that Australian taxpayer money is not overseas money from these platforms in terms of investment in Australian content. So I do think this is an area where there is an issue. I appreciate there are other issues in terms of consistence with previous legislation for free-to-air and other platforms, but my understanding is that the producer offsets are not a factor in content in other parts of the system. So this is why that is not a particularly big issue and is one where I think there is a strong argument.

The second argument I would like to make is about mandating subgenre reporting to track investment in children's and documentary content. We know that key sectors, particularly children's programming and documentaries, are under significant pressure. Although these genres are eligible Australian programs, the bill does not require the streaming services to allocate any minimum level of investment across these content types. This bill already requires reporting to ACMA on business operations, including subscriber numbers and revenue. So my amendment would simply require streaming services to provide detailed information for each subgenre, the number of commissioned titles, total production expenditure, hours produced and stats on platform availability and provide ACMA and the parliament with transparent, accurate data to assess whether the investment is genuinely flowing into these vulnerable genres at the time of the statutory review. This report will be published online, provided to the minister and tabled in parliament. This amendment doesn't impose subgenre quotas, but it would ensure that the parliament has the evidence it needs to determine whether further action is warranted.

These amendments, I think, are well targeted. I previously also had an amendment in relation to the terms of trade—particularly protecting IP. I have withdrawn that at this stage on the basis that there is some concern that it could have unintended consequences on the writers' royalties. So I think further consideration of that amendment will need to be made to make sure that it doesn't interfere with writers' rights. But the principle of the amendment I had previously circulated but am not moving right now is that the terms of trade and intellectual property of our shows is actually really important. It is one of the most important ongoing streams of revenue for independent producers. It is the independent producers that all of these content quotas are intended to protect.

To summarise, these amendments are targeted, reasonable and designed to strengthen the effectiveness and fairness of the bill. They uphold the intent of the legislation while protecting taxpayers, supporting independent producers and ensuring the parliament can make informed decisions about the future of Australian content.

Tony Burke

I will start with the concept that is relevant to all the amendments, so will speak generally. People will be aware of the extent of the legal work and the challenges of making sure we keep this piece of legislation within trade law. Some of the pushback and back-and-forth has found its way into the media but members of the House would certainly be aware of that. For that reason and because of the level of legal work that has gone into the legislation, the government will not have an appetite to accept amendments, as a general rule, as we work our way through this. That said, I will still speak to give a position on the individual amendments as they are moved.

First of all, I respect the engagement that the member for Wentworth has had with the screen industry. She has a large number of people engaged in the screen industry in her electorate of Wentworth. She has publicly raised and asked about this issue in parliament and privately has sought regular briefings from me through her entire time here, wanting to make sure that not only did we get to an obligation for the streaming services but that it was as unambiguous as possible.

The effect of the first amendment would effectively take us from an obligation of 10 per cent to 13 or 14 per cent. That is the impact it would have. There are particular reasons under trade law as to why we are introducing legislation at the 10 per cent figure, so we would not be able to support an amendment that departed from that. In the comments of the member for Wentworth, there was a reference to how the producer offset was to be calculated against other obligations. Many of the free-to-air obligations, for example, relate to time not expenditure; therefore, it is irrelevant to those. The only expenditure obligation in the same way would be the NETI obligation that applies to Foxtel. In that situation there is not a discount in the form that this amendment would seek, so keeping it as is would be consistent with how the only other expenditure based obligation we have operates.

In earlier consultation I had been seeking sub quotas. We have pulled right back from sub quotas, based on the legal position we have been working ourselves through in trade law. I would not want there to be a reporting obligation that in any way confused that should we end up in a situation where this is challenged, so the government will not be in a position to support any of the amendments.

Allegra Spender

Thank you very much to the minister for your engagement on these amendments and also throughout the time on this very important legislation, which I would like to see passed here today, as much as anyone in this House—today or in the next couple of days. I take your point that you will not support the producer offset but I do think there is a case to be made here, that currently this is not being applied consistently. There are some companies who say they want the producer offset and there are some streamers who are not asking for the producer offset. If you addressed this now you would actually fix this going forward rather than have a situation where, I expect, over time, more of those companies will accept a producer offset. I do not think it is consistently used by all streamers or expected by all streamers; therefore, it wouldn't be part of their calculations at the current stage. That is why I think this is the right moment to deal with the producer offsets. I still make the case, very strongly, that Australian taxpayers don't expect our taxpayer money to be used to support content quotas for overseas filmmakers.

The actual percentage that the government has put into this legislation is significantly lower than a country like France. Again, the industry was seeking a much higher level but, by leaving it in, it reduces that further and that is the fundamental concern of the industry. You are right: it is about the NETI, not the free-to-air, so I apologise—my mistake. In relation to that NETI point, the point is the producer offset is not used under the NETI scheme. My understanding is that it has never been applied and there is no part of the NETI scheme where someone has used the producer offset as part of those calculations. It feels like we're, in this case, bringing something that is irrelevant in another scheme into this scheme and making it extremely relevant, and, unfortunately, weakening the strength of this piece of legislation. That's the argument. I appreciate all the constraints you have in terms of dealing with this piece of legislation, but I think these are going to be issues that will be significant factors for the screen industry. If there is any way to deal with the NETI scheme to make it consistent with this, that is where the government should be going.

Question negatived.

Long debate text truncated.

Summary

Date and time: 1:25 PM on 2025-11-25
Allegra Spender's vote: Aye
Total number of "aye" votes: 47
Total number of "no" votes: 88
Total number of abstentions: 15
Related bill: Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video On Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025

Adapted from information made available by theyvoteforyou.org.au