James Ricketson
316 Whale Beach Road
Palm Beach 2108
0499214325
Senator Mitch
Fifield
Minister for
Communications and the Arts
Level 2
4 National
Circuit
Barton, ACT
2600
1st
May 2017
Dear Senator
Fifield
Following on
from my letters of 21st and 27th Feb. As with all my
correspondence, you have failed to acknowledge receipt of these!
As you
will be aware, it is virtually impossible for me to make films in Australia as
a result of the ban placed on me by Screen Australia. This ban, in operation
for five years years now, prevents me from making any form of development
application to Screen Australia. It also prevents me from accessing the
Producer Offset in the way that my fellow filmmakers are able to. It is Screen
Australia’s contention that meeting with SA staff would place them at risk. SA
refuses to provide any evidence in support of this proposition. My attempts to
secure such evidence through FOI applications are knocked back by CEO Graeme
Mason the grounds that it is not in the public interest that I be appraised of
the evidence of my alleged offences.
Jane
Supit, Head of Legal at Screen Australia, has suggested to me that one way to
protect SA staff from whatever risk I pose (the nature of this ‘risk’ has never
been explained to me!) would be for me and my creative collaborators to meet
with her rather than the SA staff members other filmmakers meet with to discuss
funding and the Producer Offset. For me and my team to meet with Ms Supit under
these conditions would be to provide our tacit agreement to the proposition
that I pose a risk to staff. This I am not prepared to do and nor should I be
asked to. My creative collaborators and members of the film industry could
quite justifiably conclude that Jane Supit’s offer was a generous one - extended to a ‘dangerous’ filmmaker; that I
was, by going along with such an arrangement, acknowledging my guilt.
Jane Supit has made reference in a letter to my “highly
offensive conduct”; providing this as a reason for the continuance of the ban
on me. This is a lie. It is defamatory. It is in line with comments made on and
off the written record by various members of Screen Australia management and
the Board this past five years. In order to justify its ban, in the absence of
any evidence, Screen Australia must vilify me; must present me as a danger to
staff; must refuse to communicate with me, to answer questions and to
characterize my asking of questions, my asking for evidence in support of the
allegations made against me, as “harassment.” This tactic has worked. I am now
alienated from the Australian Director’s Guild, a craft body of which I was a
founder. The ADG will not even mention the ban on me in its newsletter, let
alone request of SA evidence in support of the ban.
If indeed
my letters have ever made it to your desk you have chosen to ignore them. You
have not even had the courtesy to acknowledge their receipt. I am now left with
no alternative but to commence legal action to secure, from Screen Australia,
evidence of the intimidation and placing at risk I am allegedly guilty of; of ‘highly
offensive conduct’ that Ms Supit refers to. This will be an expensive and
time-consuming process – both for myself and for Screen Australia. It need not
have transpired if you, or any previous Minister for the Arts this past 5 years,
had simply picked up the phone and said to Graeme Mason (and previously Ruth
Harley), “Please provide Mr Ricketson with the evidence he has requested of the
offenses that have led to his being banned.” As I have made clear on countless occasions,
I would accept the ban on me willingly
if there were any truth to the allegations made against me.
The damage
done to my career this past 5 years cannot be undone. Leaving aside the fact
that I have not been able to complete “Chanti’s World” as a result and must
sell my “Offending Women” footage for a pittance, I calculate that the ban has
cost me at least $300,000 - $60,000 for each year that I have not been able to
work as an Australian filmmaker.
The
damage done to my reputation, however, can be undone when it becomes clear,
through the courts, that the reasons given
for the original 2012 ban were fallacious; that the reasons given for the two
subsequent bans are equally fallacious. That the acquisition of the evidence of
my alleged offenses should require legal action is absurd.
Quite
apart from the damage done to my career and reputation there is another factor
that comes into play now as far as I am concerned – freedom of speech. Once the facts are known
(namely that I have not intimidated or placed anyone at risk) it will become
clear that the original ban on me was Ruth Harley and Fiona Cameron’s
ham-fisted attempt to silence a critic; to punish me for exercising my right of
free speech. This has nothing at all to do with my being a filmmaker but goes
to the heart of a much more important problem we confront in Australia – namely
that bit by bit, incrementally, ours has become a society in which severe
punishments can await anyone who has the temerity to speak their mind freely;
who ask questions that senior bureaucrats do not wish to answer.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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