Australians emerged from our cultural cringe in the late sixties when our film and television industries thrived. Has that belief and pride in Australia gone for good?

When I grew up in rural Australia in the 40s and 50s, I believed everything of any importance happened elsewhere, we Aussies just didn’t matter. A photo of Princess Elizabeth hung on the bedroom wall of the family home. Radio was very British. and when the news came on about important issues, it was all from overseas. The films I loved to see, when I could, came from an American wonderland.

When television reached Australian shores in 1956 in time for the Olympic Games, we were lumbered with a broadcasting system, a dual system, which exacerbated our predicament. Unlike the UK and its esteemed well-resourced BBC, our public broadcaster, the ABC, was given only one channel and directed to provide comprehensive programming across Australia. If the ABC had been given two channels, it could have counter programmed (put programming for minority tastes on one while appealing to a larger audience with the other), as did the BBC.

To top off that challenge, the government decided to license three commercial television channels which meant the ABC always got clobbered in the ratings. The commercial networks readily pointed to the ABC’s smaller audience numbers, while insisting it should cover all the genres commercial stations did not want to spend money on, such as children’s programming, documentaries and any programs for minority audiences.

Despite grand promises made when licences were granted, it suited the commercial networks to argue the advertising pie was too small for three networks to invest in expensive local programming, so two-thirds of their programming came from the US. When I recommended the abolition of one network to solve that problem, all hell broke loose.

The Australian Broadcasting Control Board, which had the task of program and advertising regulation, were reluctant regulators. It was content to ignore the promises made and argued, when questioned, that there was no power under the Broadcasting Act to call stations to account. That was a matter of dispute, but the ABCB never tested its powers in court.

For the first 20 years of television in Australia, the commercial network audience seemed happy enough to be treated as an outpost of Los Angeles with its cop shows, westerns, sitcoms and game shows. The ABC did make some genuine Australian programs, but the public broadcaster was top heavy with administrative staff, and its prime-time programming had a colonial presence, with BBC programs and news read in a proper pommy accent. We neither saw ourselves nor our own neighbourhoods on Australian television. When I went to Stanford University in the US in 1966, I was asked what language we spoke in Australia.

This was all about to change with intervention by the governments of John Gorton (1968-71) and Gough Whitlam (1972-75), prompted by a group of film and television enthusiasts (including Phillip Adams and Barry Jones) along with public interest activists. In 1970 the Experimental Film and Television Fund, the  Australian Film Development Corporation, and the Media Centre at La Trobe University were established. The first  Filmmakers Co-operatives started in 1970-71. The decade also saw the creation of the  South Australian Film Corporation in 1972, the Australian Film and Television School in 1973, the  Australian Film Commission and the Australian Council for the Arts in 1975. Most states established their own film funding bodies.

With all this support activity, a new wave of Australian films emerged in the 70s and continued into the 80s from a revitalised film industry, From the vulgar, ocker comedy, of Stork (1971), to the mystical, gorgeous, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), to the romantic comedy, Crocodile Dundee (1986), film production flourished. The story about a fish out of water, a crocodile hunter visiting New York, was Australia’s most commercially successful film of all time and a global box office hit, grossing $328 million worldwide by 1986.

Other successes included _Wake in Fright, Mad Dog Morgan, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Storm Boy, Sunday Too Far Away, My Brilliant Career, Breaker Moran_t and the dystopian Mad Max. Australia produced nearly 400 films between 1970 and 1985, These were Australian stories in Australian landscapes. They were fresh, vital, compelling, confronting, direct narratives, in our vernacular with our sense of humour.

Peter Weir described those years as having “furious excitement in the air” as the emerging Australian film industry came alive. It was indeed an exhilarating time for those involved at that time, who experienced the transformation in Australia’s international identity; and the pride, as our own culture emerged.

Broadcasting was not given priority by either Gorton or Whitlam until in Whitlam’s second term when Dr Moss Cass took over as minister for the media. In the five months he had in office before the Dismissal in 1975, Dr Cass rocked the broadcasting industry and the ABCB. He appointed Geoff Evans and me (the first woman appointed to the ABCB) to add a wider vision.

Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser would sack the members of the ABCB as soon as new legislation could be enacted to form the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal in December 1976. But before the board was terminated, Evans and I had time to release, officially, policy discussion papers and reports with recommendations for community broadcasting, Australian content and children’s programs.

By that time, the public had a taste for change and how to bring it about, and although the commercial industry hand-picked the new chairman of the ABT, Bruce Gyngell, an industry stalwart, the first voice on television in Australia, to lead the industry to self- regulation, that did not happen.

Fraser decided he wanted to know what the people thought. As a result of hundreds of submissions to the ABT inquiry into self-regulation, the industry got a lot more than they bargained for, including a recommendation for the regulation of children’s programs and the introduction of a C classification and compulsory quotas. Fraser funded the fledgling Australian Children’s Television Foundation in 1982 when the Razor Gang was in full operation.

Tony Staley as minister for Post and Telecommunications from 1977-1980 also believed that democratic principles applied in broadcasting. He agreed there should be no self-regulation of broadcasting; he supported public inquiries, supported FM broadcasting, and opened up community radio in Australia. He encouraged ethnic broadcasting and established the Special Broadcasting Service SBS, in 1978. Public licence hearings for television were now accepted as part of the accountability process.

In late 1978, I was given the task of chairing the Children’s Program Committee to design and oversee the introduction of the children’s standards and, ultimately, a children’s drama quota. It was a five-year long saga where the industry used every ploy they could to undermine the potential success of the children’s drama quota, including a court challenge to the standards which they won. At that point Michael Duffy, then minister for Communications in the Hawke Labor Government, introduced new legislation (1985) to ensure television licensees had to comply with the quota standards.

The result was Australia became a world leader in the production of children’s drama, winning international awards and selling in countries all around the world. These programs provided a window on how to think, feel and belong in Australia. Round the Twist, a program I devised specifically for Australian children, tapping into their subversive humour, took off like a rocket around the world. Kids everywhere loved it.

I still receive letters from adults in their 30s who watched my programs. One I received in May this year, from a now 33-year-old, said, “I’ve always wanted to write to say thank you… my generation of kids is so grateful_. Lift Off_ didn’t just entertain me it made me feel seen.”

Paul Keating as prime minister was most passionate about the Arts and he moved the portfolio into Cabinet. He launched the Film Finance Corporation in 1989. This system made a fixed sum available for film and television investment, correcting a tax scheme which had been exploited indiscriminately since it was introduced in the early 1970s. Keating aimed to bring the Arts into the mainstream of industry and commercial life. He increased funding with the distinctly Australian Scheme and Creative Nation.

The reforms implemented by both sides of politics across two decades demonstrate what could be achieved when governments choose to act decisively with vision, policy regulation and subsidy to release the creativity of the times. The support extended to publishing, music, theatre, design and visual Arts.

Australia’s Arts support structure was the envy of creatives around the world. I was invited to speak in many countries about the system we had in place and how we got there. They knew all about Australia.

My message then is the same today. In a small country of our population size, government intervention and support for Arts policy is essential. That support needs a visionary leadership with an articulate, strong and relatable narrative about a country’s culture, relevant to the many groups who make up the national core. It requires genuine belief. Regulation, an essential part of the mix, is a process. When rules are set, the issue is not solved. The regulated adapt and you need to stay a step ahead of them. The essential dialectic of regulation is sadly misunderstood. What was called for 50 years ago is not relevant today.

Australia has none of these characteristics in place today. Wake up, Albo, wake up! Your country needs you.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.