The Howard Government has continued to hand out support for those needy organisations, the trio of Australian commercial TV networks owned by billionaires or wealthy private buyout groups.

Not content with protecting them from competition until 2012; not content from setting a playing field that allowed all the controlling shareholders in the Seven, Nine and Ten networks to consider selling their stakes at billions of dollars in capital gains, the Howard Government has handed out another big benefit that could very well cripple the independent production industry.

The changes to the assistance program and bodies were slipped out Friday by the all-unknowing Minister for the Arts, Senator George Brandis. The upshot of the changes is that free-to-air broadcasters will be allowed access to the production offset rebate that was announced in the May budget to encourage independent production and businesses. Now the independents will have to fight the networks for the 20% rebate. This could drive some producers out of business.

This is after the old system of helping the industry awarded tens of millions of dollars in assistance to the film and TV industries through budget subsidies under the Film Finance Corporation.

The May budget changes saw the administration of film and TV assistance and production changed. Film Australia, the Australian Film Commission and the Film Finance Corporation are all being merged into one organisation called the Australian Screen Authority (ASA) which looms as not only controlling all financing of film, TV and documentary production, but a government arbiter of what can and what can’t be made.

The head of ABC TV, Kim Dalton, has already criticised the Government’s ambition to make the ASA some sort of arbiter of TV and film taste. He said at an ABC function last month that the ABC wanted to work with the independent industry and wanted to be able to make programs unhindered by some remote taste arbiter in the ASA.

A measure of how little change the Howard Government will tolerate in this latest piece of corporate welfare is the deadline for responses to the legislation: 2pm today. Only a small number of interested parties were given advance copies of the proposed changes.

The dollar value of these benefits is not known, but if the Nine Network for example produce a third series of Sea Patrol through the independent producer, Hal McElroy, it could be entitled to around $3.4 million, based on 20% of the $17 million series two will cost next year.

The FFC funded 32% of the first series of Sea Patrol which cost $15 million, or well over $1 million an ep: series two will cost $17 million and the FFC is funding 15% of that. All up that will be $7.35 million in Government subsidies to a cost of $32 million for 26 eps. On top of this there’s millions of dollars in government help through the Navy providing the patrol boats and crew to man them, as well as the assistance in shooting around Navy onshore facilities.

The Government changed the rules over a year ago to increase the number of episodes in a mini series from eight to 13: that allowed Sea Patrol to be made, which has been of great help to the Nine Network which has struggled with local drama and local content this year.

The largesse given to the owners of the three TV networks borders on the obscene, but we should be used to that from the Howard Government and its jelly-backed ministers.

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