Walliams’s €120,000 was unjustified

So, now we know, thanks to a protracted legal battle conducted by the Daphne Foundation, that David Walliams was paid €120,000 for hosting the Malta Film Awards in 2022.

It is a moot point really whether Walliams’s going rate for hosting a one night event outside his home country is exaggerated or not.

The question here is whether it was justified for the Malta Film Commission to spend such an amount on one person for an event that had little to no international flavour to it. Indeed, it was the first and last time the awards were held and it remains unclear why a figure like Walliams was necessary in the first place.

The extravagance shown by the Malta Film Commission on this single exclusive event – dubbed the Malta Film Week to give it a veneer of grandiosity – cost taxpayers €1.3 million.

Walliams’s fee represents a 10% cut from that final budget. It would have glaringly represented a 30% cut had the MFC stuck to its original budget of €400,000.

The issue here is whether taxpayer money was used judiciously for the benefit of the Maltese film industry, or whether this was simply a glamorous night to satisfy somebody’s illusions of grandeur.

From where we stand, the expense on Walliams was not justified. This raises two issues – the manner by which public funds are disbursed and the lack of professional attitude when it comes to contract the services of Maltese artistes.

The first is the leisurely way by which the MFC and as a consequence, the Tourism Ministry, treat public funds as if they are their own. The lack of accountability and transparency is irritating and only made worse by the disdain shown by Tourism Minister Clayton Bartolo and Film Commissioner Johann Grech when pressed for details.

The MFC is not the personal fiefdom of Grech and thus should be accountable for every cent it spends. The commission works in a field where a certain level of expenditure is required to be competitive on the international stage. It is also acceptable that financial incentives have to be flexible enough to allow the commission leeway to attract business to Malta. It is also understandable that the commission may need to hold yearly roadshow events, whether in the form of a film festival, open day events at the film studios or through targeted sponsorships, to showcase Malta’s potential and foster a community of professionals. But none of these welcome initiatives should serve as an excuse to withhold information from the public on how money is being spent.

It took the Daphne Foundation two years to finally get a court ruling ordering the MFC to publish the Walliams invoice. To this day, we still do not know how the money allotted for last year’s Mediterrane Film Festival was spent. The MFC has also withheld a study that assessed the economic benefits or otherwise of the tax rebate initiative, on the flimsy excuse that the report was passed on to the National Audit Office.

This game of hide and seek with information on how public funds are spent must stop. It is the Finance Minister’s duty to rein in extravagant and unnecessary expenditure happening under the purview of his Cabinet colleague, Clayton Bartolo. And if overspending is necessary, it should be justified and authorised by the Finance Minister beforehand.

But the Walliams debacle has also raised the issue of how Maltese artistes are treated. This is not about comparing talent because that would be an exercise in futility. But Maltese artistes are justified in feeling dejected when they see the ease by which the MFC found no problem in spending €120,000 on an international show host when Maltese actors drafted in for the same event were paid a measly €120 that also covered the time spent rehearsing.

The Maltese actors were promised exposure, and the payment was a form of token. To be fair, this is a country-wide attitude that does not appreciate the efforts of artists, whether these are actors, singers, dancers, comedians, musicians or hosts. The promise of ‘exposure’ is what many professional and semi-professional artistes are constantly faced with when trying to eke out a living from the culture, arts and entertainment industry. It is as if they are expected to work for free or quasi free simply because they will be getting the ‘exposure’.

So, yes it does seem unfair when a government entity appears unscrupulously cavalier about paying €120,000 to a foreign performer for an exclusive event but is stingy when it comes to contracting the services of Maltese performers or others who are based in Malta. Once again, this is not a question of equivalence but one of attitude.