Dear Claudia
I have sent you a letter in
the post. It speaks for itself. I trust that Graeme Mason will forward it to
you.
The final paragraph will, I
hope, bring home to you in a personal way the damage, both professional and
personal, that your ban (and that of other fellow filmmakers - Rachel Perkins
and Al Clarke) have inflicted on me.
"Put yourself in my shoes and imagine what it would have been
like to have not been able to pursue your career as a filmmaker this past five
years? Would you have accepted this state of affairs without protest? And if
you were, year after year, denied evidence in support of the ban placed on you,
how would you have felt? How would you have responded?"
As the 5th anniversary of
the ban on me approaches (next month) I believe it is way past the point where
you and your fellow board members should provide evidence in support of the
rolling 2 year bans on me or do what is needed to be done to extricate
yourselves from the mess of your own creation.
cheers
James
Claudia Karvan
Screen Australia board member
Screen Australia
Level 7, 45 Jones St
Ultimo
2007
3rd April 2017
Dear Claudia
Twice now, in May 2014 and May
2016, you have, along with your fellow Screen Australia board members, banned
me from making any form of application to Screen Australia; from talking or
meeting with any member of staff at Screen Australia. As you have been aware
all along, your ban effectively makes it impossible for me to make films in
Australia for three reasons:
(1)
I and my creative collaborators (producers, directors
and screenwriters) cannot make any form of application for development funding
to SA. Any producer, director or screenwriter who wished to work with me would
have to do so in the full knowledge that they would not, could not, be paid for
their work.
(2)
A creative team that includes myself cannot access the
Producer Offset as this would require meeting with SA staff and placing these
same staff at risk; SA having a duty of care to provide staff with a safe
working environment. This allegation is defamatory, hurtful and nonsense (as
you know full well) but most importantly prevents me and my collaborators from
taking advantage of ‘tax breaks’ intended to encourage the production of
quality Australian film and TV projects.
(3)
Potential creative collaborators, knowing that there
can be no development funding, knowing that there can be no access to the
Producer Offset, are reticent to work with me – even if they would like to.
This is quite understandable.
Screen Australia’s decision to
effectively ban and and all James Ricketson projects reveals a pettiness,
a smallness of mind, that should be of concern to all filmmakers.
The reason for the ban on me
changes over the years (at least the words used to justify it) but in essence
the original reasons pertain – namely that I intimidated, harassed and placed
at risk members of Screen Australia staff with my correspondence. No evidence
has ever been presented to me in support of this proposition and you have never
seen such evidence. Have you ever even asked for it, Claudia? Has the board
ever asked for it? If so, was such evidence ever provided? If so, why have I
never been provided with the evidence the board is privy to? Why is it that you
and your fellow board allow Graeme Mason to refuse to accede to my FOI requests
for documentary evidence of my alleged ‘crimes’ on the grounds that it is not
in the public interest that I be appraised of such evidence?
Given that Graeme Mason refuses to
accede to my FOI requests I will put this one to the yourself and the board:
I wish, under FOI legislation, to
be provided with all correspondence that occurred within Screen Australia
pertaining to the May 2014 ban on me. This includes, perhaps most
importantly, the document (or documents) provided by Graeme Mason to the board
prior to May 2014 outlining (1) The reasons for the second two year ban and (2)
The evidence in support of the ban.
The Information Commissioner is
now reviewing Screen Australia’s decision not to accede to my most recent FOI
request on the grounds that it is not in the public interest. In the event you
and the the board also feel that it is not in the public interest to provide me
with evidence in support of the 2014 ban, could you please have the
professional courtesy to explain to a fellow filmmaker why the provision of
such evidence is not in the public interest?
My second FOI request pertains to
my second arrest in the Screen Australia foyer on 9th Nov 2012 Some
context is required here:
As I was sitting in the Screen
Australia foyer on 15th Oct 2012., waiting to be provided with
evidence of my alleged ‘crimes’, I wrote a letter to Rachel Perkins (a member
of the board) that can be found at:
Shortly afterwards, Fiona Cameron
asked the Security Manager to call the police and have me removed from foyer –
at 4pm on a work day! I was arrested and charged with trespassing.
On 9th Nov 2012, whilst
the Screen Australia board was meeting upstairs, I again came to the Screen
Australia foyer and sat quietly in it writing the following blog entry:
Shortly after finishing this blog
entry the police arrived in the foyer and arrested me for the second time. I
was charged again with trespassing and spent the weekend in jail.
My FOI request is as follows:
I wish to be provided with any and
all documents relating to who it was within Screen Australia that instructed
the Security Manager to call the police again to have me removed from the
building on 9th Nov 2012? Given that the Screen Australia board was
meeting at the time of my arrest I would like to be provided with any and all
documents relating to the board’s involvement (or lack of involvement) in the
decision to call the police?
I would appreciate a response from
the SA board to this FOI request or, at the very least, an acknowledgment from
you and the board that you have received this letter.
In order to refresh your memory I
have included, below, two letters I wrote relating to the May 2014 ban on me.
Finally, on a personal note,
Claudia. This past five years you have received a substantial amount of money
from Screen Australia that has enabled you to pursue your career as a
filmmaker. You have been able to access the Producer Offset. Put yourself in my
shoes and imagine what it would have been like to have not been able to pursue
your career as a filmmaker this past five years? Would you have accepted this
state of affairs without protest? And if you were, year after year, denied
evidence in support of the ban placed on you, how would you have felt? How
would you have responded?
best wishes
James Ricketson
cc Graeme Mason, Chief Executive,
Screen Australia
Jane Supit, Head of Legal
Senator Mitch Fifield, Minister
for the Arts
Mr Colin Neave, Commonwealth
Ombudsman
Ms Louise Vardanega, Australian
Government Solicitor (acting)
The Australian Director’s Guild
Board
The Information Commissioner
The Hon George Brandis MP
Minister for the Arts
Commonwealth Parliament Offices
Level 361 Eagle St
Brisbane QLD 4000
13th May 2014
Dear Senator Brandis
On 7th May, Glen
Boreham, Chair, Screen Australia board, wrote to tell me that the Screen
Australia board had decided to extend the ban on me for another two years – to
May 2016. The ostensible reason:
“That your deliberate, repeated
and inappropriate personal attacks on Screen Australia staff through letters
and internet publications appear intended to humiliate and damage the reputation
of Screen Australia staff in a way that is unacceptable to Screen Australia.”
On the same day, 7th
May, I a letter to you that begins:
“You champion the right of bigots
to express their opinions in public, but do you champion the right of
members of the public to express their less-than-complimentary opinions about
public servants in public?”
Consider the dispute between
myself and Screen Australia in relation to many of the public statements you
have made about ‘freedom of speech’. Here is one:
“If you are going to defend
freedom of speech, you have to defend the right of people to say things you
would devote your political life to opposing. Your good faith is tested by
whether or not you would defend the right to free speech of people with whom
you profoundly disagree. That’s the test.’”
Do you believe that I have a right
to refer to various members of senior management at Screen Australia as
‘playing fast and loose with the truth’, as being ‘parsimonious with the
truth’ or, on occasion, ‘liars’? This is as offensive as my language has
ever been in any of my correspondence with Screen Australia this past six
years.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard was
called a liar in many public fora (including parliament) but no-one was banned
by a government department for using the ‘l’ word. Prime Minister Tony Abbott
is now being referred to regularly as a ‘liar’. Has anyone been banned by a
government body for doing so? No. If it is OK to call our Prime Ministers
liars, why not senior public servants – especially when the facts (if anyone
bothered to look at them) bear out the truth of the epithet? (It is worth
pointing out that the specific ‘crimes’ Glen Boreham refers to, humiliating and
damaging the reputation of others, is a sport much practiced in Federal
parliament! Indeed, some politicians are regularly praised for their ability to
humiliate members of the opposing team and inflict as much reputational damage
as possible.)
There will, inevitably, be limits
to the freedom of speech you champion. And there should be. Standing up in a
crowded cinema and screaming ‘there’s bomb’ under my seat, for instance.
If I have exceeded the limits of
what is acceptable in terms of free speech in any way, perhaps being banned for
four years is an appropriate punishment. However, such draconian sentence
cannot, in accordance with the dictates of natural justice, be imposed without
(a) the accused being provided with evidence of his crimes, (b) the accused
being given the right of respond to that evidence and (c) the accused being
given the right of appeal.
Despite two years of asking for
it, no evidence has ever been given to me that I intimidated of placed at risk
members of Screen Australia’s staff in my correspondence prior to 9th
May 2012 – the ostensible reason for the first 2 year ban. Now, in May 2014, I
am again being banned without being provided with any evidence, the right to
respond to it or the right to appeal the decision made by the board.
The other assertions Glen Boreham
makes in his letter of 7th May, in support of the new ban are as
follows:
“That you are ineligible for
funding under Screen Australia’s Terms of Trade (paragraph 1.1.1) because
you and/or related entities have an outstanding debt of $32, 629.19 owing to
Screen Australia.”
Is it appropriate to ban a
filmmaker for two years because he has a debt to Screen Australia?
The other is:
“That your substantive complaints
about Screen Australia’s decision not to fund your production Chanti’s World
have been exhaustively addressed including by external review by the
Commonwealth ombudsman.”
This statement is demonstrably
untrue in every respect. I never, at any point, made a complaint to Screen
Australia about not receiving funding for CHANTI’S WORLD. Glen knows this to be
the case. So does the board. Glen is lying. And the board is going along with
the lie because its members must clutch at whatever straw they can to justify
both the first ban on me and now this second one. Even if I had complained
about not receiving funding, is this a reason to ban someone for four years?
No, of course not.
So we are left with my having
‘humiliated’ Screen Australia staff; with having damaged their reputations. If
I have a right to the free speech that you espouse, your should overturn the
board’s ban.
In any event, natural justice
demands that I be provided with evidence of crimes so drastic as to lead to my
being banned for four years. If this evidence is not forthcoming, the Screen
Australia board has denied me natural justice and should, I believe, be sacked
– not for the damage its members have done to my career but because they
clearly do not have the kind of commitment to transparency, accountability and
natural justice we have a right to expect from Australia’s peak film funding
body.
best wishes
James Ricketson
Claudia Karvan
Board Member
Screen Australia Board
Level 7, 45 Jones St
Ultimo 2007
15th May
2014
Dear Claudia
Evidence, please, that I have ever
once intimidated or placed at risk members of Screen Australia’s staff – the
ostensible reason for the ban you, Rachel Perkins, Rosemary Blight, Richard
Keddie and your fellow board members placed on me two years ago.
If I am guilty as charged perhaps
your ban is warranted. If I am not guilty your ban is an abuse of power and
questions arise about the honesty and integrity of the Screen Australia board.
My guilt or innocence can only be determined if Screen Australia releases
evidence of my crimes – an easy task given that all the evidence is to be found
in correspondence SA has on file. You, along with your fellow board members,
have adamantly refused to provide any evidence in support of your ban for two
years now. Why?
In extending the ban on me by two
years the charges of ‘intimidation’ and ‘placing at risk’ have been replaced by
‘humiliating’ and ‘damaging’ the reputations of Screen Australia staff. What
about the damage to my own reputation in being accused of intimidation and
placing Screen Australia staff at risk – serious accusations that, in other
contexts, could lead to AVOs being taken out against the person so charged?
Glen Boreham asserts that I
complained, in correspondence, that I had not received funding for CHANTI’S
WORLD. This is not true. It is a lie. Glen Boreham knows it to be a lie. If I
call Glen a liar this is a statement of fact. If this is damaging to Glen’s
reputation, the damage is well deserved. The Chair of the Screen Australia
board should not lie when providing reasons for any decision reached by the
board.
If Glen is telling the truth, of course,
if I did complain that I had not received funding for CHANTI’S WORLD, it is
quite inappropriate for me (and perhaps defamatory) for me to call him a
liar. Indeed, it is me who is the liar. It would be quite appropriate for
me to be referred to as a liar in public, or online. This would be both
humiliating and damaging to myself but I would have only myself to blame.
It is three and a half years now
since Fiona Cameron made this same assertion – namely that I had complained
about not receiving funding for CHANTI’S WORLD. Fiona was playing fast and
loose with the truth, being parsimonious with the truth. Or, to call a spade a
spade, lying. This became apparent when, after 18 tortuous months of asking,
she finally identified the letters in which, she insisted, I had complained
about not receiving funding. Even the most perfunctory of glances at the
letters reveals that Fiona was wrong (I am trying to be polite here!) but such
facts were of no importance to the Screen Australia board. You decided, collectively,
that if you said it often enough (“James complained about not receiving
funding”) that the statement would eventually become accepted as the truth.
You, Claudia, know that both Glen
and Fiona were lying about my having complained about not receiving
funding. So do your fellow board members. You have latched onto this lie,
however, because it casts me in a bad light, as a sore loser – wingeing and
complaining because I did not get the money I asked for. This tactic has worked
because no-one within Screen Australia, no-one within the Ministry of the Arts
and certainly not the office of the Ombudsman has been prepared to ask for the
evidence.
As the lie is repeated, endlessly,
and as I ask for evidence, endlessly, the stakes get higher and higher. There
is now no gracious and credible way for the board to extricate itself from not
just from this lie but from those pertaining to intimidation and placing at
risk. You must keep repeating it and hope like hell that no-one within
the media ever asks, quite forcefully, to be provided with evidence of my
crimes. To date no-one has.
I wonder Claudia if you actually
believe it to be appropriate to ban a filmmaker? Perhaps you do not. Perhaps
you have, this past two years, consistently voted against the ban and been
outvoted each and every time by your fellow board members? If this be the case,
if you feel that an injustice has been perpetrated, you could register your
protest at the obvious breach of natural justice involved here by resigning
from the board in protest; as a matter of principle. If, on the other hand, you
have, this past two years, consistently voted in favour of the ban, could you
please explain to me, as a fellow filmmaker, why you have done so? Could you
please have the professional and personal courtesy to provide me with the
evidence you believe warrants my being banned for four years?
If any truly independent
arbitrator/conciliator were to look at the correspondence now and declare
“There is no evidence that Glen Boreham is correct in his assertion that James
Ricketson complained that CHANTI’S WORLD was not funded or that he intimidated
staff,” serious and quite justifiable questions would be raised about the
honesty and integrity of the board. This is why you have refused my many suggestions
that the dispute be placed in the hands of someone with no vested interest in
the outcome of an investigation and who relied on facts alone to arrive at a
determination as to who was lying – myself or senior members of Screen
Australia staff. I suggested this in Mary 2012:
It could be argued that my being
banned is of no great consequence, other than to myself. The reason why it is
important, in my mind at least, is that all of us working in film and
television want and need a Screen Australia board that is transparent, that is
accountable in its decision-making and does not lie about the reasons it gives
for decisions it makes. My being banned in the absence of evidence makes it
abundantly clear that we do not have such a board. And the recent ICAC
investigations reveal that when there are large amounts of tax-payer dollars at
stake, a lack of transparency and accountability leads to corruption. The
blackballing of one filmmaker on the basis of lies (in this case me) is
evidence of a minor act of corruption. The same could be argued about the
$3,000 bottle of wine Barry O’Farrell accepted as a gift. The wine in itself
was not the problem. His acceptance of the wine was symptomatic of deep seated
problems about the way politics in NSW is carried out. I believe that there are
lots of questions that should be asked about the way funding decisions are made
by Screen Australia.
I imagine that you will ignore
this letter, as you have the other letters I have written this past two years.
So be it. In doing so please don’t be surprised if my posting of it online is
damaging to your reputation. And please don’t try to blame this damage on me
when all you have to do is provide evidence that I am guilty as charged and it
will be me whose reputation is damaged; me who is humiliated in public. And
quite rightly so.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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