Australians looking for home-grown stories could face “screens of darkness” and wall-to-wall foreign imports if the Turnbull government dismantles the complex system that underpins Australia’s film and television industry, according to the Screen Producers’ Association’s chief executive, Matthew Deaner.

The industry contributes more than $3bn to the Australian economy a year, generating $250m in exports and supporting 25,000 jobs. But in an increasingly globalised landscape, it is fighting for survival as deregulation proposals threaten to send it back to the early 1960s, when Australian stories took up 1% of the airwaves.

For the past year, as steroid-fuelled US blockbusters tore through Australian multiplexes (eating up 84% of the box office), an equally epic battle has raged off-screen, with the government launching three reviews into the Australian screen industry’s viability. Cate Blanchett, Joel Edgerton, Rose Byrne and Chris Hemsworth have added their clout to the “Make it Australian” campaign, which has been lobbying to convince the federal arts minister, Mitch Fifield, of the industry’s cultural and economic worth.

It’s a multiplayer battlefield, with billions of dollars at stake. Should foreign productions get bigger tax breaks? Should Australian content quotas be removed? Should funding to the public broadcasters be cut?

All eyes are on the minister’s office, which confirms that the government’s internal review into “the best ways to support the availability and production of high-quality Australian and children’s content in the modern media environment” is ongoing. New industry measures are expected to be unveiled with the federal budget in May.

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“We’re at a tipping point,” says Jan Sardi, head of the Australian Writers Guild (AWG) and writer of Australian film Shine. “This is a great opportunity for the government to say we value Australian stories and this is how we will protect them forever.”

Deaner adds: “We have huge global potential. But if the government doesn’t get the policy settings right, very soon we won’t have an independent Australian screen industry at all.”

The TV presenter Julia Zemiro, who signed Make it Australian’s open letter in March, is concerned: “We can’t simultaneously rejoice in being recognised overseas, have the world fall in love with our stories and then not make more.”

Joining Spa and the AWG to fly the flag for Australian-made dramas and documentaries are the Australian Directors’ Guild (AWG) and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), who are imploring the government not to remove the policies that have seen the screen sector evolve from cottage industry to international player in four decades, increasing its net worth by 15.5% to $3.4bn from 2011-12 to 2015-16.

Make it Australian’s 215 signatories want no more cuts to SBS, the ABC and Screen Australia; a raising of tax incentives for Australian TV and foreign productions; a cementing of the commercial free-to-air Australian content quota at 55%; and new regulations for Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) providers, to ensure Australian stories are seen on expanding digital platforms.

Opposing regulation are Channel Seven, Nine and Ten, who want to replace the 55% content quota with a flexible “points” scheme and abolish Australian children’s programming all together. With advertising revenue declining as viewers migrate online, the networks argue quotas are unsustainable: one hour of Australian drama costs up to $1m to produce, while high-end, ready-made series like Game of Thrones can be bought for a fraction of the cost.

Weighing into the fight is the Queensland government, which has seen the “location offset” – the tax break for offshore productions – attract Hollywood blockbusters Aquaman and Thor: Ragnarok to the state, creating jobs, and bolstering the economy. The premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, now wants the offset raised from 16.5% to 30%, after failing to secure the new Fast and Furious franchise.

Proponents for bringing more Hollywood productions to Australia say they provide valuable experience to local crews, and welcome injections of cash.

But the prospect of Australian taxpayers subsidising US mega-films hits a cultural nerve. Playwright David Williamson questions why Queensland should be a “backlot for Hollywood” when it could support local Australian films. “If you can bring Marvel out and get the same tax breaks as local content, why not?” says the AWG’s CEO, Jacqueline Elaine. “The pollies get to stand with Robert Downey Jr. Everyone loves that stuff. But if all we’re doing is creating tax incentives for international companies to come here and make whatever they want, we might as well be investing in cars.”

The brain drain has begun

As the debate rages on, the gargantuan shadows of Netflix and Amazon loom. With more than 250 million subscribers worldwide, and 450 million projected by 2022, the streaming behemoths dwarf Australia’s free-to-air and pay TV competitors. Netflix now has an estimated 3.5 million subscribers in Australia, up from 2.9 million in June 2017.

Many countries already protect their film industries from being swamped by wall-to-wall imports. South Korea and France have bullish quota and subsidy systems, while the EU has mandated a 30% local content quota for new SVOD players – seeing Netflix invest US$1.75bn in The Crown (UK), Dark (Germany) and Cable Girls (Spain) in 2017 alone. Netflix’s 2018 production budget is US$8bn – but Australia has no system in place to ensure the SVOD will invest in, or screen, any local production.

SPA wants 10% of Netflix’s Australian revenue funnelled into home-grown content, in line with the regulations that have seen Foxtel produce popular Australian series Wentworth and A Place to Call Home. Applying the 10% rule to Netflix could inject AUD$80m – or eight new drama series – into the Australian industry each year. But the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has announced the US$130bn SVOD should not have to comply with Australian quotas, as “regulations often backfire”.

The industry’s calls to preserve and modernise Australian content protections has triggered some tall-poppy negativity on social media, with claims that Aussie films are not “good enough” to compete, and millionaire celebrities like Blanchett don’t need taxpayer support. But industry representatives are adamant that the livelihoods of an entire industry, from its technicians to its directors, are at stake.

“If they remove the quotas we’d close down,” says the Australian Directors’ Guild CEO, Kingston Anderson. “The majority of our directors work in TV. Without the networks having to air Australian content, we’d lose a whole generation of filmmakers. Weir, Armstrong, Luhrmann, Thornton, Moorhouse, Perkins: without government support, these people don’t come through.”

Spa’s modelling of the commercial networks’ proposed “points” system confirms that, had it operated in 2016, Australian drama hours would have dropped by 40%, budgets by $125m and 3,500 jobs would have been lost.

“We make world-class TV here,” says director Jeremy Sims, currently helming Foxtel’s A Place to Call Home. The series’ sales to 123 countries shows the quota and subsidy system is working. Adds Sims: “Foxtel and the commercial networks would just buy American dramas without it.”

Fiona Donovan, the series’ production designer, fears that without content protections, Australia would lose its highly skilled crews: “Thousands of us would either have to quit the industry, or move overseas.”

Special effects designer Dan Oliver, nominated for an Oscar for Mad Max: Fury Road, says the brain drain has already begun. With US mega-productions bypassing Australia for countries with more generous tax breaks, Oliver has seen 15 of his 50-member crew on Hollywood sci-fi epic Pacific Rim Uprising, which shot in Australia last year, relocate to the UK. “I’ve been surviving on small Australian dramas and TV commercials since April 2017,” Oliver says. “If that work dried up too, my business would go to shit.”

Back to the bad old days?

The parallels between the Make it Australian campaign and its original 1950s incarnation are stark. In 1953, the Menzies government launched an inquiry into whether television should be regulated. Commercial operators argued for no quotas and the freedom to air what they liked. The writers guild countered that, without regulation, networks would choose cheap foreign programs over local production, and Australia would become a cultural “dumping ground”/ Menzies opted not to regulate and, eight years later, 99% of all TV shows were imported.

“Growing up in the 60s watching TV, it was barren, there were no Australian stories,” Sardi says. “All you heard was American accents. If they take away the protections, we’ll lose our identity.”

So far, the screen industry’s calls have been met with measured silence by the government. When the four guilds went to Canberra in September 2017, the Greens, Labor and One Nation opened their doors – but Fifield only had time for a five-minute chat “because Derryn Hinch said ‘you need to speak with them’,” Anderson says.

The commercial networks appear to have the government’s ear. While Screen Australia says the Coalition has cut its funding by $51.5m since 2013, the government has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in reduced licence fees to Nine, Seven and Ten, allowing them to use a legislative loophole to pass off New Zealand-made programs as Australian content. The largesse hasn’t “trickled down” to producers: in the past three years, the networks’ Australian drama spend fell by 30%, with cheaper reality dating and cooking shows replacing the tentpole series that once blitzed prime time like Underbelly and Offspring.

The battle to protect Australian screen content face bigger legislative hurdles: while public consultation is required, the arts minister has the power to direct the Acma to reduce or revoke content quotas without parliamentary oversight. And under Australia’s 2005 Free Trade Agreement with the United States it is an open question whether once quotas are removed they can ever go back up.

“This is absolutely crunch time stuff,” says the MEAA’s national director of equity, Zoe Angus. “In the UK they removed kids’ content quotas and programming fell by 92%. They backtracked because it was a disaster. We don’t have that luxury because of the FTA. There is broad support for Australian stories but we’re acutely aware the minister seems overly responsive to the commercial broadcasters. He never listens to us.”

Meanwhile, the guilds fear the government will opt for a non-interventionist approach in May – slashing local content quotas, applying a flat 30% tax break to all Australian and foreign productions, and allowing multinational giants such as Netflix to operate without regulation.

“The whole industry will be gutted, basically,” Sardi says. “I have no objections to healthy offshore production but not at the expense of the local industry.”

Adds Matchbox’s Tony Ayers, producer of The Family Law and The Slap: “This is a dangerous moment because we have a delicate ecosystem that gives new talent opportunities and people career paths, and the government is crucial to that.

“Without government intervention, the industry wouldn’t be here.”