Katrina McGowan, the director of the Stan Originals documentary Revealed: How To Poison A Planet, and Prison Chronicles podcaster Sid Punts have warned that funding remains a huge challenge for filmmakers and creators to get ideas off the ground.
They argue that Australian long-form storytelling is in a state of flux as global streamers flood the market and fight for advertising dollars with no obligation to invest in Australian productions.
It’s not all bad news. Curious Media co-founder Poppy Reid, who has taken on Prison Chronicles to help commercialise and grow it, believes the podcasting sector is ripe for investment.
In a panel about the future of Australian storytelling at Cairns Crocodiles, Presented by Pinterest, the trio shared their work and discussed some of the challenges Aussie creators face as well as a funding crisis for long-form Australian productions.
How to Poison a Planet
McGowan’s first film as director, Revealed: How To Poison A Planet, exposes the shocking extent to which man-made “forever chemicals” – also known as PFAS – are now found in the bloodstream of 98 per cent of the world’s population. They are used in a range of household and industrial products such as cookware, make up, clothes and firefighting foam because of their stain, water and oil-repelling properties.
McGowan first discovered the toxic impact of firefighting foam from a news report on TV and by reaching out to a lawyer who was starting class actions on behalf of impacted communities.
One of these was the NSW South Coast community of Wreck Bay, which had its waterways and drinking water contaminated by PFAS chemicals from firefighting foam used by the Australian Defence Force.
Working with Nine journalist Carrie Fellner, the pair learned that the problem stemmed from the US, and the multinational conglomerate 3M, which invented forever chemicals in the 1930s.
McGowan told the audience that the major challenge she faced in the four year process of producing the film was funding.
“We had this as an idea, and we got knocked back, for development funding for this project. So it was tough,” she said.
After refining the proposal and bringing on Fellner, who was reporting on the issue for Nine’s newspapers, “it all sort of clicked into place”.
“Getting people to believe in it was also a challenge. At the time PFAS chemicals were largely unknown so it was about trying to show people that we are living in a chemical contaminated world,” she said.
“Another challenge was telling the story across Australia and the US, not only the time difference, but trying to weave that together and make sure you are able to capture the local story in 85 minutes.”
Making the film was a patient and emotional experience for McGowan, not least because of how sick the Wreck Bay Village community was at the time.
“There was one period where you were filming in a six month period and there were about seven or eight funerals just in that time,” she said. “It was just devastating. You become friends with these communities, but then we were also able to leave while they were still there, stuck with this contamination.”
The film has been screened in Australia, the US and Europe, raising awareness about ‘forever chemicals’ and placing pressure on governments to better regulate their use; although Australia is “quite behind the rest of the world”, allowing higher levels of PFAS in drinking water compared to other jurisdictions.
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New episodes coming soon…..👮#TrueCrime pic.twitter.com/0i0mbHwLEW— Prison Chronicles Podcast (@PrisonChronicle) May 30, 2025
Prison Chronicles
Sid Punts, a former prison officer, produces the podcast Prison Chronicles. It’s a unique addition to the true crime genre by providing prison officers with a canvas to share their stories.
In each episode, Punts visits a different prison and interviews prison officers with the sort of access than only a former officer could get.
“Anytime anyone finds out about a prison officer, they are fascinated. Prison officers don’t generally talk. They don’t trust the media but I was able to get hold of a lot of people’s stories,” Punts said.
It’s easy to see why Prison Chronicles has become such a hit in a short period of time.
Punts recalled one story about the ‘Granny Killer’ John Wayne Glover.
“He was called the Granny Killer because when he came across elderly women he just went into a fit of rage and killed several victims,” Punts said.
Glover was at a hospital for treatment and Punts was tasked with taking him back to Long Bay jail.
“We went into a lift and went up a couple of floors and the doors opened. You don’t really want members of the public to come in. I’m trying to close the doors but just as it was about to shut an arm comes through and it’s an elderly lady…and she came in with a few of her friends. So I’m in the lift with the granny killer and four grannies,” he said.
“This is what I was faced with, he was getting agitated and shaking and sweating.”
Punts produces all of the sound effects for his shows, sometimes dragging his wife to jail to help out.
Curious Media
Punts has been signed up by Curious Media, a new podcast company focused on exploring challenging and thought-provoking stories.
It was founded by The Brag Media’s former co-founder and editor-in-chief Poppy Reid and entrepreneur Steve Grace.
Reid said that Curious Media wants a range of unique voices to engage audiences through candid discussions and in-depth storytelling. She is confident that podcasts are on the cusp of becoming a major media channel in their own right.
“It’s been hard to commercialise podcasts until now. But if you look at the podcast industry, globally, it is worth more than $4 billion, and we’re seeing growth of 30 per cent in advertising budgets in podcasting in Australia alone,” she said.
“The global audience for podcasts will be 600 million by next year. So there’s this huge pool of audience there for brands to tap into, even though Australia is a little bit behind America when it comes to advertising spend.”
Reid said that holding companies should consider allocating more spend to podcasts because it provides brands with a highly-engaged audience that also tends to skew younger, in the Gen Z and Gen Alpha range.
A funding crisis?
The growth in podcasting, both in terms of audience and commercially, is undeniable, even if it has been a slower burn in Australia.
For the TV and film industry, however, it’s a different story. According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, commercial broadcasters’ investment in Australian dramas has declined from $79 million in FY20 to $48.5 million in FY24. Australian documentaries have trended upwards, but from a far lower base. In FY20, investment was $7 million, rising to $20.8 million in FY24.
This is dwarfed by the steady rise in money being pumped into light entertainment, such as reality TV formats and game shows, which now attracts $571.8 million in FY24.
Compounding the problem for Aussie filmmakers is the impact of global streamers, such as Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max, that are fighting for eyeballs and advertising dollars against legacy commercial broadcasters.
“Netflix, Amazon, Disney, they have a huge presence here, probably everyone here has at least a subscription to one. But they have no obligation to invest that back into Australia content (unlike commercial broadcasters),” McGowan said.
“One thing that the industry is really pushing for at the moment is to implement content quotas. So if streamers are going to have a large presence in Australia, they should be commissioning 20 per cent back into Australian productions. That would increase opportunities for the filmmakers, and for Australian stories to get told.”
McGowan has urged the industry to fight for the future of Australian storytelling and culture.
Punts agrees, adding: “It’s important these stories get told and we want businesses to just take a punt on Aussie creators and filmmakers.”
Nine, the owners of Stan, have today announced they are investing more in their own long-form current affairs and investigations unit. A promising step forward, but more is needed to ensure Australian long-form stories continue to thrive.
