After years of lobbying for more kids content funding, Australian producers scored a big win today when their government committed to introducing legislation that will require global streamers to invest in locally made content.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the government plans to introduce a bill in Parliament to establish a quota—or what it calls an “Australian content obligation”—for many streaming services operating in the region, with the aim of ensuring that domestic viewers have guaranteed access to Australian stories.

The legislation would affect global streaming services with more than a million Australian subscribers, such as Netflix and Prime Video, which would be required to invest at least 10% of their total Australian expenditure—or 7.5% of their revenue—into new local children’s, drama, documentary, arts and educational programming.

“We have Australian content requirements on free-to-air television and pay television, but until now, there has been no guarantee that we could see our own stories on streaming services,” said Australia’s minister for the arts Tony Burke in a release. “With this legislation, we’ll be able to ensure that no matter which remote control you’re holding, Australian stories will be at your fingertips.”

For much of Australia’s television industry, this is seen as a long-overdue step. But it’s especially critical for kids content creators, who haven’t benefited from broadcaster quotas since the ones for children’s programming were scrapped back in 2020. Losing them had a direct impact on the amount of kids programming that was available on air in Australia. In 2023, only 95 hours of locally produced kids content was broadcast on the country’s free-to-air channels, down by 84% from the previous year. And in 2019, this number was at 391 hours.

The Australian government has been touting the value of content quotas for quite some time, which has made the wait especially frustrating for the industry. Back in 2023, it outlined in a report that SVODs in Australia earned more than US$1.7 billion in 2021, but had no requirement to give back to the market by investing in Australian content.

Picture from the 2022 Make it Australian campaign where industry folks lobbied the government for more support. Courtesy of Screen Producers Australia.

Screen Producers Australia (SPA), which has been lobbying hard for the quotas, celebrated today’s news. Australia’s production industry has been facing declining commissions, and the trade org is hopeful that quotas could help reverse this trend.

“This announcement marks a landmark day for the Australian screen industry,” said SPA CEO Matthew Deaner. “For too long, our local production sector has operated in an uneven environment where global streaming services could reap the benefits of doing business in Australia without contributing fairly to the creation of Australian stories. Today’s commitment from the Albanese government is the result of years of advocacy. It recognizes that Australian stories matter, and that they deserve to be seen and heard on every platform.”

Image courtesy of Photoholgic via Unsplash