This September 25 letter exchange between myself and the Screen Australia Board took place a couple of months before SA confirmed, as a result of an FOI request, that I had never intimidated or placed anyone working in the organisation in 2012. Close to mid-January 2026, no effort has been made by anyone at Screen Australia to meet with me to sort out what was a bureaucratic cock-up back in 2012, or even to acknowledge in non-bureaucratic language that it took place.
Mr. M. Ebeid AM, Chair
Members of the Screen Australia Boad
Screen Australia
GPO Box 3984, Sydney 2001 11th September 2025
Dear Mr. Ebeid and Members of the Screen Australia Board
In the Board’s letter of 5th September, you have placed on record demonstrably untrue accusations and assertions, twisted my own words, engaged in ‘straw man’ argumentation, and threatened to ban me again. I have no choice but to place a detailed response on record that challenges those aspects of the Board’s narrative that are false or misleading. If you choose to see this letter as ‘harassment’ and ‘intimidation’ so be it. I have no intention of making another application to Screen Australia. I am concerned here only with my reputation.
Dear Mr Ricketson
I refer to your recent correspondence of 14, 20 and 26 August 2025 addressed to myself and various board
members and staff, delivered by email and physical post.
As I noted in my letter of 1 August, I will not be entering into further correspondence regarding the matters you raised in your earlier letter dated 17 July. These are all matters that have been comprehensively canvassed in the agency’s various responses to your letters and emails, including the CEO Deirdre Brennan’s recent letter of 5 August.
The word ‘canvassed’ is only ever used these days by bureaucrats who wish to create the illusion, on file, that questions have been answered when they have not been. The Board has deliberately misrepresented here the interchange between myself and Ms. Brennan in relation to her letter to me of 5th. August. I have enclosed it in full – further evidence in your minds, perhaps of ‘harassment’ on my part.
Any reasonable person would consider the volume of correspondence the agency is receiving from you as unacceptable and as having an intimidatory and harassing effect on the staff involved.
Any ‘reasonable person’, any independent observer with an open mind, on reading through this and my previous letters would separate facts from spin and wonder why SA did not simply deal with the questions I sought answers to at the outset. This hypothetical ‘reasonable person’ would wonder why, over a period of nine months now a filmmaker with 55 years of experience has been unable to secure a conversation with any member of SA staff or Board?
If Screen Australia were truly committed to the precepts of transparency and accountability staff would respond to questions and not leave filmmakers such as myself with little choice but to continue to ask the same questions. Better still, SA staff would speak with filmmakers in person on the telephone, thus saving both them and staff a lot of time. More importantly, such conversations, such dialogue would be more in keeping with the idea that Screen Australia collaborateswith filmmakers in a collegial as opposed to adversarial manner, as was the case with the Australian Film Commission.
However, having regard to your recent correspondence, there are two matters that I consider necessary to clarify. Let me be very clear and confirm that I had no knowledge of the events in 2012 that you raised until I received your letter of 17 July. I also had no knowledge of any such ban on yourself from the agency until I received your letter. Accordingly, your supposition that Screen Australia has a pre-existing bias against you or is otherwise exercising an agenda to collude or conspire to decline your recent application for funding is wildly inaccurate and fundamentally misplaced.
Your ’Let me be very clear’ preface, a politician’s cliché, is unnecessary. I accept that you had no knowledge of the ban. However, your use of the word ‘accordingly, connecting as it does your lack of knowledge to my alleged ‘supposition of a pre-exiting bias etc.’ is a crude ‘straw man’ argument. I used the qualifying word ‘seems’ a few times, my suspicions that an informal ban might still exist, amplified by Screen Australia staff’s refusal to meet with me, to speak on the phone with me or to answer questions. I know of other filmmakers who have not been banned but whose public criticisms of Screen Australia have rendered them persona non grata. This is common knowledge within the industry.
Please point out to me where I made the ‘supposition that Screen Australia has a pre-existing bias against you or is otherwise exercising an agenda to collude or conspire to decline your recent application for funding.’
Secondly, and for the record, Screen Australia’s recent decision to decline your 2025 application for your documentary project Chanti’s World was made solely on the merits of your application and without reference to the events of 2012.
The only connection I have made is between my application to SA in Jan this year, knocked back by Richard Hiuddleston with a form letter, is to my correspondence with Richard when he was Head of Documentary at the ABC. In that role, in 2019, he knocked back a ‘CHANTI’S WORLD submission that I had not made to the ABC; a submission that he knew I had NOT made. He then placed on record that the submission I had not made had been assessed. Given this verifiable fact, Richard could (and I believe should) have recused himself from the assessment round. When the circumstances of Richard’s prior knocking back of a non-existent submission became known, due diligence on the part of Dierdre Brennan should at least have raised the possibility in her mind that Richard was not the right person to be recommending to me that I liaise with him regarding making another application.
On 29th November 2024 I wrote to Screen Australia: “The circumstances surrounding my development of 'CHANTI'S WORLD are such that I feel it would be valuable to have an informal conversation with someone at Screen Australia about these before making an application - if only to find out whether or not I want/need money for renders me eligible to make an application.”
Such a conversation never occurred. After receiving a form letter of rejection, no reasons given, no assessors comments attached, this dispute began. Richard informed me that Screen Australia did not fund the digitising of footage, then changed his mind and said that it did. (See correspondence) I asked Richard to nominate an Investment/Development Manager for me to speak with before considering making another application. He told me that I had no right to one until as my application had not been successful. And yet, Screen Australia recommends to applicants, under: 5. Seek Expert Advice: For projects that may fall outside typical funding parameters or if you are unsure, discuss your project with a funding body’s investment manager to understand eligibility and expectations. Does this sequence of events strike Board as being fair?
I can categorically confirm that there is no existing ban as you allege and I reject any suggestion that Screen Australia’s funding decisions are influenced by improper or irrelevant considerations.
And yet, despite Screen Australia’s own guidelines, I had to make two FOI applications to acquire unredacted copies of assessor’s comments! Do these verifiable facts not raise any questions in your mind as to why Richard behaved in this way?
Please point out to me where, in my correspondence, I suggested that SA’s funding decisions were influenced by improper or irrelevant considerations? I have asked questions of assessors because some observations made could only have been made if they had not viewed the audio-visual materials I submitted.
When I did acquire unredacted assessors’ comments as a result of a second FOI submission, it became apparent that it was Richard, not the assessors, who had not watched the material. It seems he had decided that he needed to place on record what would have been a very good reason to knock it back if it was true – namely that my relationship with Chanti had already been dealt with in the two ABC programs. It had not been. My pointing this out (easily verified) became one of the examples of ‘harassment’ that you refer to.
If the sequence if events I have described here were a matter of any concern to Dierdre Brennan would looked at it impartially, dealing with verifiable facts. She did not. SA’s modus operandi today, as it was in 2012, is to circle the wagons around staff members regardless of their behaviour. And the SA Board does likewise – circles the wagons to protect the CEO. If this involves spin doctoring or the placement on file of untruths, so be it. SA staff must be protected from criticism always. If filmmakers such as myself need to be silenced to maintain the illusion of transparency and accountability, so be it.
What the Board is implying in this 5th September letter is that at no point must an applicant ask questions of assessors, or SA staff, point out factual errors in what they have written or criticise SA’s policies..
In addition, I find suggestions that Screen Australia’s senior executives and Board have conspired in a constructed or revisionist history in order to unreasonably target a particular individual to be inappropriate, unacceptable and frankly, deeply insulting.
What the Board has presented here is a ‘straw man’ argument, enabling it to be righteously indignant, adopt the high moral ground, and be ‘deeply insulted. Point out to me where I have suggested that ‘Screen Australia’s senior executives and Board have conspired in a constructed or revisionist history.’ This would be a damming indictment of me if it was true but, as the Board knows, it is not. If you insist that it is true, please place on record your evidence that I hacve accused you of being engaged in a conspiracy.
I am advised that your project, Chanti’s World has been the subject of 6 unsuccessful applications for Screen Australia funding over a period spanning 15-plus years.
I have learnt over half a century of communications with bureaucrats that when one prefaces a statement with ‘I am advised’s/he is leaving him/herself with an opportunity, when the truth is known, to say, ‘Well, that is what I had been advised was the case.’ In so doing, s/he can place a false statement on file but not be held accountable for it if its falsity is exposed. If need be, I can and will point out the ways in which your assertion is false. You know that it is. You have placed this assertion on file for your own bureaucratic reasons – these being to avoid the question that began this current bout of letter writing: Please provide me with evidence of my crimes?
It has been reviewed by no less than 5 different assessors during this period. On every occasion, each of those assessors have independently arrived at the conclusion that Chanti’s World was uncompetitive and did not warrant Commonwealth funding. Any objective bystander would likely conclude that your recent correspondence with Screen Australia is prompted by an inability to accept the agency’s numerous determinations on your project rather than a genuine concern regarding the agency’s impartiality.
But let’s pretend that the statement above is true and that my previous submissions (‘spanning 15-plus years’) were deservedly rejected. As you will all be aware, it is commonplace in our industry, and that of book publishing, for writers, screenwriters, documentary filmmakers to receive dozens of letters of rejection before producing their award-winning work. In accordance with the logic being presented here, the 7th, 8th, 9th , 10th and 11th publishers to whom JK Rowling presented her first Harry Potter book should have rejected it on the grounds that it had already been rejected many times. That the Board thinks in this way is symptomatic of lack of understanding of creative processes. In the creative universe I inhabit, the fact that a filmmaker keeps working on a film project for 30 years, despite multiple knockbacks, is a good reason to take him or her seriously and not treat them with the dismissive contempt that SA has treated my CHANTI’S WORLD application.
As you know, after 30 years of self-funding, I was not applying for any money for myself, but for a relatively small amount of money to get tapes digitised, my hard drive having been stolen by Cambodian police.
As it happens, the dispute back in 2012 began with my asking questions that SA staff did not wish to answer, closely followed by statements placed on file that were demonstrably false. When I pointed this out SA doubled down, as the current Board is a dozen or so years later. My attempts to have the record set straight, to be provided with evidence of harassment, intimdation etc. led to Fiona Cameron calling the police to have me removed from the foyer of SA, where I was sitting reading a book waiting to speak with a flesh and blood human being about the matter. And now the Board in 2025 is threatening to ban me if I persist in asking for evidence of my crimes.
I insist that you uncouple the events of 2012-2016 from your 2025 application and refrain from speculating on the motives of previous Screen Australia staff in order to make these wild accusations regarding the agency’s integrity due to your inability to accept its decision on your project. These are allegations that Screen Australia takes very seriously and will be strongly refuted.
This is just bluff and bluster on the Board’s part – a ‘straw man’ argument.
Once again, I reiterate that the volume of correspondence the agency is receiving from you is unacceptable and regarded as harassment and is having an intimidatory effect on the staff involved.
I doubt very much that any members of staff do feel ‘intimidated’, but if they really do feel intimidated by a filmmaker who asks legitimate questions they are not fit for purpose. As I mentioned in an earlier letter, the expression, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’ .
The tone of this letter and its accompany threat of banning is intimidatory, its message clear: stop asking questions or we’ll ban you. I will not stop, so go ahead and ban me if you think this is the most appropriate way of dealing with a filmmaker who asks questions the Board does not want to answer.
Accordingly, I urge you to accept that your application for Chanti’s World has been unable to demonstrate adequate merit for funding and to desist from your campaign of correspondence in making unfounded allegations against Screen Australia. In the event you persist in this campaign, the Board will move a further resolution to refuse to accept future applications or correspondence from you.
This is just bluff and bluster. Ham-fisted intimidation. I will complete CHANTI’S WORLD without any assistance from SA and I can assure you that the finished documentary will make this Board, along with the Board of 2012, appear petty, vindictive, lacking in commitment to the precepts of transparency and accountability, and not fit for purpose.
Yours sincerely
Michael Ebeid AM Chair
No comments:
Post a Comment