australian television information archive

Daughters should stand on their own

TAXPAYERS should not have to subsidise the Nine television network and the SA Film Corporation to produce a new series of McLeod's Daughters in South Australia.

The producers of the successful television series are seeking a $500,000 Government handout to continue producing the program in the state. The implication is that if Treasurer Kevin Foley does not release taxpayers' money to support the production, it will move interstate.

The Nine Network, production company Millennium Television and the film corporation are playing poker with a pair of twos.

McLeod's Daughters rates well in Australia and is sold internationally. Television is a competitive private industry. Producers are no more entitled to be underwritten by government than McDonald's or Hungry Jacks.

The show's creator, Posie Graeme-Evans, says in effect that in the light of the major restructuring and cost-cutting that is taking place within the Nine Network, government subsidy is necessary. Read another way, that says in view of a push for higher profits, a government subsidy is necessary.

There are benefits in McLeod's Daughters being produced near Gawler. Tourists trickle on to the film site, a handful of casual jobs, dependent on the success of the series, are created.

But few viewers are aware of where the series is set. There is no significant tourism or investment benefits for SA. South Australia's tourist attractions are not shown.

Industrial investment, in its varying forms, is welcome but it is not the responsibility of government - the taxpayer - to subsidise the profits of high-risk private enterprise.

South Australians would love McLeod's Daughters to stay.

But if the cost is the difference between life-saving technology at the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital and the extension of a private enterprise television program, McLeod's Daughters can go interstate.

March 05, 2007
The Advertiser