The Australian government has tweaked the rules of its Producer Offset scheme to allow soap operas and other drama series to qualify for funding. Channel Seven’s Home and Away will now be eligible.
The producer offset provides a tax rebate to producers for expenditure on eligible Australian film, television and other projects. Currently, a drama series must spend at least A$500,000 ($336,000) per hour on qualifying Australian production expenditure (costs incurred for goods and services used or provided in Australia).
It provides a 40% rebate for feature films and a 30% rebate for productions on other platforms, calculated as a percentage of a production’s qualifying Australian production expenditure.
Under the new system, drama series that spend at least A$35 million ($23.5 million) per season in qualifying Australian production expenditure, but do not meet the hourly expenditure requirement, will be newly eligible for the rebate.
The new per-season threshold will apply to drama series that begin filming after 1 July 2024.
“We want to see more Australian stories on screen. Support for Australian drama is essential to achieving this,” said Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke. “This change will help support more iconic Australian stories to be told and shared by the people who know them best.”
“Home and Away is the second longest running drama series on Australian television after Neighbours. It follows the lives and loves of the residents of Summer Bay, a fictional town in New South Wales, and has been on Channel Seven since 1988. It still runs four days a week on the network and has been licensed to broadcasters and streamers in around 80 countries.
Alf Stewart is the only remaining member of the original cast. Celebrity guest appearances have included Ed Sheeran, Michael Palin and Atomic Kitten. Chris Hemsworth appeared in nearly 200 episodes between 2004 and 2007 before becoming a Marvel star.
