The Australian regions stepping up – and cashing in – when Hollywood comes calling
The release of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga today is just the latest example of Hollywood’s growing interest in Australian locations, offering potentially huge rewards across regional economies
By Mercedes Maguire
Mon, Jul 31, 2023 9:13am 5min
Director George Miller on the set of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga with Chris Hemsworth filmed at Broken Hill. Image courtesy of Warner Bros
When the Sydney Harbour Bridge was shut down in early 2023 so Ryan Gosling could film a stunt on it for his latest movie, The Fall Guy, all eyes were on the handsome leading man – and why not? But did you stop to think of the Aussie company that provided his lunch that day, the makeup artist who got him looking just right, the supplier who provided portable loos for the day’s filming, or even the helicopter crew tasked with helping shoot the adventure scene?
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Australia has long been a popular choice for Hollywood to film their blockbusters – The Great Gatsby at Manly, The Pirates of the Caribbean on The Whitsundays and Gold Coast, The Matrix in Sydney and Wolverine in Parramatta, to name a few. Most recently, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, directed by George Miller, was shot on location in Broken Hill. And behind the press conferences that congratulate the government for bringing such productions down under and the media snippets that catch glimpses of the leading man or lady caught walking our streets, it’s small businesses that benefit.
Since 2018, 39 international movie productions have been filmed in Australia – predominantly the east coast states of NSW, Victoria and Queensland – which has generated more than $3.3 billion in private investment and provided more than 24,100 jobs for local cast and crew, according to data from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.
A report titled Creative Industries Ripple Effect by UK-based consultancy Olsberg SPI found that 63 percent of the expenditure derived from making a movie or film went to businesses outside of the film industry – to the construction, catering, hair and makeup, real estate, tourism, hospitality and countless other businesses that benefit when an international film production company rolls into town.
The town of Hay in south western NSW was struggling last year after months of COVID state border lockdowns decimated their Sydney to Adelaide drive-through tourism. When a big budget Hollywood action film (that cannot be named) chose the Riverina town to film, it was a lifeline.
“The impact was immediate and tangible,” says the economic development officer for Hay Shire Council, Alison McLean.
“There was $7 million in economic activity just from the cast and crew being in town. It was also incredible from a confidence-boosting point of view for our businesses; all of a sudden there were 400 extra people spending money in the region and the businesses really stepped up and took a lot of pride in providing excellent service.”
The regional town of Hay has seen a $7 million boost from being used as a film location.
She said the most obvious impact was on the accommodation sector which had suffered a 60 percent downturn in revenue and as a result of the filming in town, there was a 72 percent increase.
For The Whitsundays in Queensland, it is hoped the long term benefits of movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and, more recently, Ticket to Paradise starring Julia Roberts and George Clooney will translate to tourism dollars.
Julia Roberts and George Clooney starred in Ticket to Paradise, shot in The Whitsundays.
“After the movies are released, we reap the tourism rewards as our stunning region is up in lights,” says Tourism Whitsundays CEO Rick Hamilton. “If you Google Ticket to Paradise, you’ll find it was filmed at Palm Bay Resort and Hamilton Island, both island resorts that are bookable by visitors.
“The beauty of The Whitsundays is that it’s hard to disguise. Hollywood can change the location, but it still looks like The Whitsundays.”
Locations manager Jeremy Peek — who has worked on Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Alien: Covenant (2017), Peter Rabbit 1 and 2 (2018 and 2021) and Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) — says international film production is a growing sector. He says COVID shone a spotlight on Australia as an ideal filming location and the effects of that have continued beyond the opening of borders.
Jeremy Peek on location in Broken Hill
“Early on when COVID hit it was felt that we were just about the only country in the world who could keep going and the world looked to us as a safe haven to film in,” Peek says. “(Netflix series) Pieces of Her, for example, was due to start shooting in Vancouver when COVID hit, they’d built sets and everything, but they moved the shoot here. And Three Thousand Years of Longing, which was originally meant to be shot in Sydney, London and Turkey, was re-scouted to Sydney because there was confidence in Australia being a safe place to work.”
Peek says the government incentives and rebates are important now that the COVID scare has passed because they show Australia can compete on a world stage.
It’s for this reason Ausfilm CEO, Kate Marks, believes the incentives the State and Federal Government offer to attract the likes of Disney, Universal, Marvel and Netflix to our shores need to be increased.
There is the Location Incentive grant, which is a merit-based offer that entitles an international production company to a grant worth 13.5 percent of their production expenditure. A secondary offer, the Location Offset Rebate, provides a 16.5 percent tax break. When used together, they result in a 30 percent carrot dangling in front of production companies. But only the Location Offset is permanently legislated.
“On its own the 16.5 percent Location Offset is not going to stay competitive for Australia on a world stage for too long,” she says. “Ideally, we would love to see a 30 percent Location Offset incentive as it’s the best option to provide ongoing certainty for companies.
“There are studios who are coming back again and again; NBC/Universal have done 13 film and television projects here, and studios like Disney and Warner Bros also keep coming back.
“We need to see that continue.”
And it appears the Federal Government has listened, announcing an increase to the Location Offset from 16.5 per cent to 30 percent for eligible productions in the recent budget.
It’s a move Peter Davey, co-CEO of law firm EMT, who specialise in entertainment, media, sport and technology advice, has welcomed.
“With the offset established, Australia will remain a highly attractive location for international productions and the investment in talent and jobs here will continue to grow,” Davey says.“In the details of the Government’s announcement, there are also requirements for international companies to, for example, commit to training and to work with Australian digital, visual effects and post production companies.”
Film and television producer James Hoppe adds Australia needs to expand its studio space, evolve the foundation of film technology and increase the local labour force in order for international film production in Australia to grow.
“The labour force can only handle so much and when an international production comes in, they suck up all the labour pretty quickly,” the owner of Maker Films says.
“There needs to be an implementation by local council so they can handle the influx of an international production. When Marvel took over Fox Studios and Elvis was being filmed on the Gold Coast and Robbie William’s Better Man was being filmed in Melbourne, it sucked up a lot of the labour force and production facilities and it was difficult for other international or local producers to access required resources.”
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
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The Republican nominee says it would help bring down home prices, though these buyers account for a fraction of U.S. home sales
By WILL PARKER
Fri, Sep 6, 2024 3min
Former President Donald Trump said he would ban undocumented immigrants from obtaining home mortgages, a move he indicated would help ease home prices even though these buyers account for a tiny fraction of U.S. home sales.
Home loans to undocumented people living in the U.S. are legal but they aren’t especially common. Between 5,000 and 6,000 mortgages of this kind were issued last year, according to estimates from researchers at the Urban Institute in Washington.
Overall, lenders issued more than 3.4 million mortgages to all home purchasers in 2023, federal government data show.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, made his comments Thursday during a policy speech to the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan.
Housing remains a top economic issue for voters during this presidential election. Rent and home prices grew at historic rates during the pandemic and mortgage rates climbed to levels not seen in more than two decades. A July Wall Street Journal poll showed that voters rank housing as their second-biggest inflation concern after groceries.
Both major candidates for the 2024 presidential election have made appeals to voters on housing during recent campaign stops, though the issue has so far featured more prominently in Vice President Kamala Harris ’s campaign.
Trump has blamed immigrants for many of the nation’s woes, including crime and unemployment. Now, he is pointing to immigrants as a cause of the nation’s housing-affordability crisis. Yet some affordable-housing advocates and real-estate professionals said Trump’s mortgage proposal would fail to bring relief to priced-out home buyers.
“It’s unfortunate that given the significant housing affordability crisis that is widely acknowledged across most partisan lines, we are arguing about a minuscule segment of the market,” said David Dworkin, president of the National Housing Conference, an affordable-housing advocacy group.
Gary Acosta, chief executive of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, a trade organization, said, “It’s just another effort to vilify immigrants and to continue to scapegoat them for any issues that we have here in the United States.”
A Trump campaign spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Undocumented immigrants in the U.S. can obtain an obscure type of mortgage designed for taxpayers without Social Security numbers, most of whom are Hispanic. The passage of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 allowed banks to use identification numbers from the Internal Revenue Service as an alternative to Social Security, extending a number of financial services to people without legal status for the first time.
Mortgage loans for undocumented immigrants are typically higher interest and borrowers include legal residents who have undocumented spouses, Acosta said. Lenders include regional credit unions and community-development financial institutions.
In his speech, Trump said that “the flood” of undocumented immigrants is driving up housing costs. “That’s why my plan will ban mortgages for illegal aliens,” he said.
Trump didn’t elaborate on how he would enact a ban on such loans.
Though mortgages for undocumented people living in the U.S. are relatively rare, residential real-estate purchases by foreign nationals are big business , especially in expensive coastal cities such as New York and Los Angeles. These sales have declined in recent years, however.
Close to half of foreign purchases are made by people residing abroad, while the other half are made by recent immigrants or residents on nonimmigrant visas, according to an annual survey by the National Association of Realtors. Many affluent foreigners buy U.S. homes with cash instead of obtaining mortgage financing.
In his Thursday speech, which focused mostly on other economic matters such as energy and taxation, Trump proposed other measures to bring down housing costs, including cutting regulations for builders and allowing more building on federal land. Similar ideas appeared in the housing policy outline Harris released in August .
The former president has spoken on housing-related issues in speeches at other recent campaign stops, including in Michigan last month, where he touted his administration’s 2020 overturn of a policy that had encouraged cities to reduce racial segregation .
“I keep the suburbs safe,” Trump said. “I stopped low-income towers from rising right alongside of their house. And I’m keeping the illegal aliens away from the suburbs.”