''Burn the Butterflies'' is an Australian 1979 TV movie about a government dealing with the controversy around

uranium mining Uranium mining is the process of extraction of uranium ore from the ground. Over 50 thousand tons of uranium were produced in 2019. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia were the top three uranium producers, respectively, and together account f ...

.Ed. Scott Murray, ''Australia on the Small Screen 1970–1995'', Oxford Uni Press, 1996 p21 It stars

Ray Barrett Raymond Charles Barrett (2 May 19278 September 2009) was an Australian actor. During the 1960s, he was a leading actor on British television, where he was best known for his appearances in ''The Troubleshooters'' (1965–1971). From the 1970s, ...

as the

Prime Minister of Australia The prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister heads the executive branch of the Australian Government, federal government of Australia and is also accountable to Parliament of A ...

. There was some criticism in the press, but it won a Logie in 1980 for best single drama.''Burn the Butterflies''
at

AustLit AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (also known as AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway; and AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature), usually referred to simply as AustLit, is an internet-based, non-profit collaboration betwee ...

It was written by

Cliff Green Clifford Green OAM (6 December 1934 – 4 December 2020), born in Melbourne, Australia, was an Australian screen writer, whose best-known work is the script for the film '' Picnic at Hanging Rock'' (1975). Career Green spent his early workin ...

. who described it as an "experiment".

Cheeky me wanting to push the boundaries and do a drama within another drama, which moved in real time and was relatively cheap to make... There was a crisis in Government and there were news teams filming what was happening. And that was the documentary that was a fake documentary. And all the action, all the on-stage action (if that is the right word) was happening in the Prime Minister's suite in Canberra—so the way he was reacting, and who he was talking to—it was almost a one-man show. And it was beautifully performed. By Ray Barrett. It was wonderful.Oral history of Cliff Green, ''Australian Writers Guild''
accessed 13 July 2013

Green says the idea to make the film came out of a week he had spent in Canberra for the

Australian Writers Guild The Australian Writers' Guild (AWG) is the professional association for Australian performance writers for film, television, radio, theatre, video and new media. The AWG was established in 1962. The AWG is a member of the Australian Council of ...

lobbying for the arts budget.

We brought up the highflyers from Australian Opera, and the ballet, and the Sydney Theatre Company—but we did the hard work. We knocked on the doors and we faced the politicians. And I understood, at the end of that, how that place worked. And it was nothing like how we thought it worked. And if I had decided that I would like to do a Canberra-based piece and set myself, and got up and become a member of the press corps for a few weeks I wouldn’t have got it. It was being in there, and understanding the contradictions, and the layers of commitment and attitude, and so on, that brought it on, that gave me the confidence to write it.

References

External links

* Australian drama television films Uranium mining 1979 television films 1979 films 1979 drama films 1970s English-language films {{Australia-tv-film-stub