This isn’t about celebrities, it’s about helping locals

THE Gold Coast screen industry is as good as those of London, Hollywood and New York.

It has grown significantly in the past five years with backto-back productions including Warner Bros’ Aquaman, Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok and Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean:

Dead Men Tell No Tales, all of which received one-off top ups.

Those one-offs indicate the Federal Government values this work and recognises the benefit, however it has not responded to a massive national call to action from industry to increase the offset to a competitive rate.

The Location Offset is a tax offset incentive that was designed to attract big-budget screen production to Australia to bring significant new money into the economy and create jobs.

It also generates tax through that expenditure bringing revenue back into Treasury.

The incentive has been part of the Federal Government’s programs for more than 10 years.

But as other jurisdictions have caught on to the success of attracting film and the benefits that come with it, the Australian incentive has stagnated.

Countries such as New Zealand and American states such as Georgia introduced competitive incentives and have now developed industries of scale while the Australian incentive has simply become uncompetitive.

Over the past 10 years Georgia has grown from a $US214 million a year screen industry to one valued at $US9.5 billion.

Productions over the past five years have sought top-ups which began with a $20 million fund that secured Unbroken and San Andreas to Australia – effectively increasing the Location Offset from 16.5 per cent to 30 per cent. The fund was successful and fully expended, which means that individual productions now attempt to navigate to politicians to seek one-off top-ups to ensure they can make the most of the world-class creative resources and facilities we have here.

Gold Coast businesses have become familiar with filmmaking as they seek out steel, timber, concrete, cranes, shipping containers, make-up and landscape supplies to create imaginary worlds for the big screen.

These films spend as much as $200,000 in direct expenditure each day of production on local jobs, facilities, catering and equipment. It is a large amount of new money injected into the economy in a relatively short period of time and the Gold Coast has proved that it’s the home for this production in our country.

This money continues to circulate for about 33 months before the Location Offset is paid to the production.

These productions also bring many other benefits – 160,000 hotel bed nights were generated in the city while

Pirates of the Caribbean shot on the Gold Coast. That was effectively six months of an entire hotel’s rooms booked.

This is not about giving money to celebrities. It’s about electricians, make-up artists, architects, engineers and local businesses from coffee shops to hotels earning significant income and creating jobs on the Coast. These jobs matter. Queensland jobs matter.

It’s time to increase the Location Offset.