‘Disgusted’: Ugly row over the loss of a major award at Australia’s version of the Oscars

An ugly row has broken out over the removal of one of the major awards from the country’s version of the Oscars, with Mad Max director George Miller saying he has taken it away in “disgust” and the Australian Film Institute insisting it made the decision.

The latest development in a bitter dispute between the institute and Miller, its patron of 25 years, centres on the Byron Kennedy Award for outstanding creative enterprise, which has been won by the likes of Jane Campion, Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, Rachel Perkins, John Polson, Ivan Sen and John Clarke over more than four decades.

Miller said he had taken it from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards to the revived Tropfest , “where it’s been welcomed”, from next year.

But the AFI board responded in a statement that it made the decision not to present the “discretionary award” during its July review of next year’s awards program.

“We are thrilled to hear that the Byron Kennedy Award will live on under the Tropfest banner,” the board said. “It is the perfect place to acknowledge innovative filmmaking.”

The row comes as former chief executive Damian Trewhella’s Federal Court case against the AFI that claimed he was dismissed from his $327,000 a year job in a sham redundancy – the trigger for the dispute – has entered mediation.