Legal push to have State Government reveal payment to Disney
THE public has a right to know how much government money was paid to a US company to film Pirates of the Caribbean : Dead Men Tell No Tales in Queensland, the man at the centre of a legal appeal said today.
Screen Queensland claims there are strong confidentiality reasons for not making public the amount the State paid to lure US company Disney to make the film on the Gold Coast in 2015.
The film and television body wants to keep secret its dealings with Disney over State Government financial incentives for it to film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man Tell No Tales.
Gerard Sammon, counsel for the Department of Premier and Cabinet, has also opposed disclosure of the amount of incentive, claiming the information was a Cabinet decision and exempt.
A Right To Information request was made by Christopher Boyd, of Gold Coast company Glass Media Group, who asked for access to documents showing the amount of the incentive payment.
He was granted access to a one page document, apart from one sentence describing the structure and value of the incentive payment, and appealed.
On August 19 last year, the Office of the Information Commissioner decided the document detailing the amount paid to Disney by the State Government should be made public.
“There is a strong and compelling public interest in ensuring that government decisions which result in the transfer of significant quantities of public funds to private interests are made with the utmost transparency and accountability,” the Information Commissioner said.
Taxpayer-funded Screen Queensland (SQ), which negotiated the financial agreement, appealed the decision in Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
“I believe that the Queensland people should know how much money is gifted to US corporations to make feature films,” Mr Boyd said, after today’s tribunal hearing.
“A lot of this information in other industries is available to people.
“In the film industry, for some reason, they don’t want to tell us exactly what the story is and we’ve been just asking a very simple question, can’t get the answer, still waiting for the answer.”
Counsel for SQ, Jonathan Horton QC, today told the tribunal that disclosure of the amount paid to Disney would be a breach of confidence and detrimental.
Mr Horton said there was a very clear case of commercial in confidence information being exchanged between organisations for the benefit of the Queensland public.
He said that information was exchanged “to attract business to the State of Queensland to facilitate economic activity”.
Mr Horton said by keeping the amount confidential it avoided a bidding war that might result in even higher payments.
He said the enticement of business to Queensland was a competitive business and other States might be willing to outbid Queensland.
Mr Horton argued that the Information Commissioner erred by applying the wrong test in her decision.
SQ is a company with one shareholder, the State of Queensland, represented by the Premier and Arts Minister, Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Mr Horton said the Information Commissioner had wrongly decided Screen Queensland was a public body, when it was a proprietary body.
He also said it was improper to say all information held by a government body was government information.
The Information Commissioner said the amount of the incentive paid was in a briefing note created after the Cabinet Budget Review Committee’s approval of the grant paid to Disney.
However, Mr Sammon said the information at issue reflected a Cabinet decision and disclosure of the amount would therefore reveal a decision of Cabinet, and it should be exempt.
“Queensland competes to attract international production,” Screen Queensland Chief Executive Tracey Vieira said outside the tribunal.
“We want to be competitive to make sure we really maximise the benefits for Queensland when we secure these productions to the State.”
She said Pirates of the Caribbean injected $220 million into the Queensland economy and generated 2142 Queensland jobs.
There were over 161,000 bed nights generated from the production in Queensland.
“This is about our industry, our community, our cultural benefits and our tourism benefits and we want to make sure Queensland has the opportunity to continue having these come to our State,” Ms Vieira said.
Screen Queensland also did not want to show its hand to other States competing for film productions, she said.