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Issue No. 212 | 12 March 2004 |
Unfriendly Fire
Interview: Baby Bust Safety: Dust To Dust Bad Boss: Shaming in Print National Focus: Work's Cripplin' Us International: Bulk Bullies History: The Battle for Kelly's Bush Economics: Aid, Trade And Oil Review: The Art Of Work Poetry: Sew His Lips Together
The Soapbox Sport Politics Postcard
Seven Good Reasons To Save Medicare Naked Leading The Blind
Labor Council of NSW |
News Actors Bucket "Crap" Deal
The MEAA warns that Federal Government has signed off on a deal that will give Australians a guarantee of only four percent of domestic product on pay TV, and a flood of US content will be the inevitable result.
The US, it says, will have open slather on any new and emerging technology used to provide entertainment to Australian audiences. "Unbelievable as it may seem the Americans have even more crap than we get to see now. They want to drop that crap on us," says Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) NSW secretary Jonathan Mill. "Eighty percent of Australians think there is too much American culture on our TV's as it is." On top of the 4% of local content for pay TV, current levels of protection for Australian content on free-to-air television have been slammed as "inadequate" by the MEAA, and no local content levels have been set for any new technologies.
"This is a deal for the 20th century, not the 21st," says Mill of the free trade agreement, the detail of which was finally released last week. "It is based on last century's technologies and fails to protect Australian cultural interests in regard to the rapidly developing technologies of the future." "The agreement denies the right of Australian people to determine access to their own culture. John Howard is allowing a foreign nation to determine Australia's cultural future." LaPaglia and other US-based Australian actors will lobby the U.S. Congress in a bid to improve the terms of the treaty. At the recent Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras MEAA members prepared banners against the FTA reading: "Keep Our Poofs Employed!" "For this we went to war!" "John Howard - Stick Your FTA Up Your Arse!"
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