Battles loom for Australian performance writers

22 May, 2015

The coming year will witness major battles for Australian film, television and theatre writers, the president of the Australian Writers Guild has warned.Addressing members at the AWG annual meeting in Sydney, Jan Sardi told members that while much progress had been made in advancing the interests of performance writers, some major challenges were looming.Delivering his annual report on 21 May 2015, Jan said the battle for protection of moral rights and cohesion in the Copyright Act is both old and new and will form a large part of the Guild’s focus over the coming year.“Legal and industrial battles with a range of production companies and their parade of lawyers with new ideas about what a contract should look like – and what a writers should take or leave – we fight these battles on the individual scale and on the large scale every day,” he said. “We are very pleased to report that some of the largest companies in the country are seeking to work collaboratively in pursuing their interests and evolving contractual needs internationally, with fair, respectful and equitable conditions for writers.”Jan Sardi – one of Australia’s leading screenwriters and an Oscar nominee for the movie Shine – said 2014 had been another busy and eventful year for the Guild, which now had  2,242 members, a “very substantial representation of the entire Australian stage and screen storytelling industry”.“When the Guild speaks it speaks with the authority of that great many members committed to their colleagues, the craft and their industry.”He said the AWG provided personal industrial and legal advice to members on 735 Individual matters during the year. This ranged from minimum rates, terms and conditions, credit arbitrations, format sales, entitlements for original concepts and creators, assignment agreements through to residuals, unpaid royalties, copyright law and the ever important moral rights. He thanked members who gave their time to the Guild’s many award initiatives, including the internationally-recognised AWGIE awards.He urged members not to take for granted all the hard-won gains they had made.“There's always some bastard trying to take them away,” he warned. “And they will succeed unless we have a strong, viable Guild.”