ABC News | Hanna Story | November 6, 2024

ABC chair Kim Williams says investment is needed to fund the production of Australian stories, as he also calls for the ABC to be “aggressively, consciously ambitious” in its storytelling.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Screen Producers Australia (SPA) CEO Matthew Deaner, which streamed on Facebook Live today, Williams said the formula for meeting Australia’s creative ambitions is a mixture of investment and regulation.

“Never before has Australian content mattered more,” said Williams.

“There is no shortcut if you want Australia and Australian stories and Australian narratives and Australian imaginations and Australian accents and Australian settings and Australian history to populate the audio and video screens of Australia and elsewhere. You have to invest, and you have to create an environment that captures investment.”

The need for regulation is seemingly a reference to the federal government’s promised — but delayed — introduction of local content quotas for streaming platforms.

Marked out in last year’s national cultural policy, the quotas were due to be introduced by July this year, following negotiations with platforms and the screen industry, which advocated for a quota of 20 per cent.

Streaming platforms have come out strongly against quotas, and concerns have been raised about how the policy would interact with Australia’s free trade deal with the United States.

These platforms form part of what Williams describes as a “digital tsunami” of content consumed by Australians, especially young people.

Bluey jumps in the air happily

ABC is responsible for the bulk of children’s programming in Australia, after content quotas for kids TV were cut during the pandemic. (Pictured: Bluey.) (ABC)

“[Young Australians’] aspirations are now often being described by producers and creators who don’t think about Australia at all,” said Williams.

“Yet there are many very precious things that we need to ensure are protected and nourished from Australian roots that represent genuinely different values and genuinely different historical perceptions.”

The ABC’s role

Williams flagged two ways to increase investment in Australian screen culture: direct government investment and the creation of incentives to encourage private investment.

That direct government investment is sorely needed, in the wake of cuts to the ABC since the Hawke-Keating era.

“If you cast forward to the present day … if indexation had applied, the ABC would have $494 million more today to invest in Australian content than it has,” Williams said.

Williams’s comments follow his call for increased funding for the ABC in a speech at the State Library of Victoria in June, three months after he was appointed chair.

In his speech he described a “revitalised ABC” as a “source of great national strength”: “Such an investment will repay itself over and over and over again”.

But while the ABC chair — and former CEO of Foxtel — is passionate about funding for national broadcasters, he stressed the ABC also needed to prove it had something unique to offer the public.

“I think it’s incumbent upon the ABC to volunteer very good reasons for [direct investment in the ABC], and to present really coherent cases as to why that investment needs to happen and what will flow from that investment,” he said.

“If the ABC is not commissioning content that is distinctive and definitionally different and ambitious for Australian audiences and for Australia, it’s not doing its job properly. If you’re receiving direct investment from government, you’d better make sure that there is real purpose behind it.”

Matthew Deaner, a middle-aged man, and Kim Williams, an older man, sit talking together at a round studio table.

Deaner and Williams also spoke about the need for the ABC to meet the audience where they are, including on YouTube and TikTok. (Supplied: Screen Producers Australia)

He added that the ABC needed to work in concert with the independent production sector to create Australian drama, documentary and children’s programming.

“We have a substantial independent production sector now, and it is, in fact, the future … The whole thrust of [screen] policy is to reinforce that sector and ensure it’s healthy and ambitious.”

That should also extend to what ABC commissions, said Williams.

“The ABC needs to be much more consciously, aggressively ambitious to achieve strong creative outcomes and to back creators and to give them voice and empowerment to realise really, really dynamic visions,” he said.

“They’re the things that always make people sit up and notice. They’re the things that are always the breakthrough moments for Australia, both with Australian audiences and with the rest of the world.”

In his June speech, Williams signalled an increase in serious documentaries, dramas, comedies, children’s TV and arts coverage on the ABC.

A TV still of Kitty Flanagan sitting at a desk, wearing glasses and a loose brown suit. She has a bemused expression.

According to Screen Australia’s Drama Report, ABC spent $43 million on Australian drama in 2022-23. (Pictured: Kitty Flanagan in Fisk, one of ABC’s international hits.) (Supplied: ABC TV)

And when it comes to negative criticism of the ABC — including from commercial players like News Corp, where he was CEO for less than two years — Williams thinks the best response is to create great content.

“[ABC] needs to be a constructive contributor to the general personality of modern media in Australia,” he said. “It needs to be there, ever-present and provisioning great stuff.

“The response to the avalanche of negative criticism is to do better work. To work better and do better work. And that applies in terms of the internal culture of the ABC and the way it responds to the creative community at large and the way it actually addresses the audience.”