‘Surrender your booty’
QCAT to settle Pirates 5 film funding stoush
A LONG-RUNNING legal stoush to stop taxpayers from finding out how much the State Government tipped in to lure Disney to the Gold Coast to film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales will return to court next week.
Taxpayer-funded state film and TV body Screen Queensland (SQ) has been fighting to keep its dealings with the US entertainment company secret. SQ and Disney spent 14 months fighting a Right To Information request to find out the total amount of money Queensland taxpayers gave Disney to film Pirates 5 on the Gold Coast in 2015.
In a decision handed down on August 19 last year, the Office of the Information Commissioner advised the Department of the Premier and Cabinet that a document that details the amount should be made public.
The matter has been before the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal since September last year after SQ appealed against the ruling,
The appeal means the taxpayer-funded company is burning up more public money trying to stop the public learning how much it gave Disney.
The RTI was lodged by Christopher Boyd, from Gold Coast company Glass Media Group, who said yesterday the matter would return to QCAT on July 12.
“We’re hoping democracy will prevail under the pressure of enormous legal spending on the matter from our government and its agencies,” he said.
“The legal and administrative costs incurred to taxpayers as a result of the actions of the DPC and Screen Queensland will definitely be another sum of money worth looking into.”
The “David versus Goliath” case has attracted the attention of producers who want to cover the long-running battle in a documentary.
Formerly the Pacific Film and Television Commission, SQ has been set up as an ASICregistered company with one shareholder — the State of Queensland, represented by the Premier and Arts Minister, Annastacia Palaszczuk.
While government-owned corporations must table annual reports in parliament, SQ is not required to because it falls under the Commonwealth Corporation Act.
SQ did not publicly table its annual report for the 2015-2016 financial year, only its financial report.
SQ and Ms Palaszczuk declined to comment on the case.
The State Government, through SQ, has invested an extra $30 million over four years as part of its bid to continue to attract large-scale film and high-end television productions to Queensland.