Head of marketing Kathleen Drumm among victims of Screen Australia cuts
Screen Australia head of marketing Kathleen Drumm will leave the organisation after five years this week, one of the victims of sweeping budget cuts at the organisation.
In an email to colleagues Drumm said it has been “a lot of fun and a great privilege” to have helped “promote Australian talent at home and abroad”.
“Good luck to everyone releasing a film or screening your program on tele ahead of Christmas,” Drumm wrote in her email. “I will be thinking of you and wishing you favourable reviews, ratings and box office.”
Drumm is one of several staff to depart Screen Australia following series of sweeping cuts announced in July as a result of cuts to funding from the Federal Government. Marketing had been identified as one of areas to be culled, while its legal division has also suffered.
The publicly funded body said it was axing the equivalent of 12 full time staff and cutting support for training and marketing in a move that is expected to save $6 million this year. The cuts followed a reduction in funding to Screen Australia of $25 million over four years announced in May’s Federal budget.
A spokeswoman declined to reveal who else was departing “out of respect for the individuals concerned”.
She said some of the staff to go were part time contractors while there was also “natural attrition”.
Chief executive Graeme Mason said at the time of the announcement that Screen Australia was “returning to our core business” and described marketing as a “nice function to have”.
“We’re looking to focus much more clearly on the core areas of business development, whether that’s a company or individual,” he said. “We have to look at how we support companies and individuals like freelancers in terms of the promotion to find new jobs, as opposed to pure marketing which would be a nice function to have.”
Steve Jones
Sensible decision under a new CEO. The place was teaming with overpaid bureaucrats swanning around the world in the pointy end of the plane.
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But the hotels in Cannes are gonna go broke if this keeps up.
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oii harry the market will sort itself out, we need people at the pointy end of the plane, just like we need people putting coal into the fire to make the wheels turnnn….
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