state of Australian TV writng

When cleaning up my office I came across an old "Green Guide" article about television writers - along the unsung-heroes line. I was interested in it enough to tear it out and save it for later, and later is now. First some interesting facts and figures: of the 600 full members of the Australian Writers Guild 190 are in Melbourne but only 25-30 would consider themselves in full-time employment as writers. [conclusion: the full-time writer in any industry is a lucky bird] "If you've written 6 hours of television in a year you've had a good year," according to Jacqueline Woodman, the Guild's director. She goes on to say:
"You have to be prepared to be what's called a jobbing writer. If you want to be an artiste then you won't get work all the tim. If you only want to work on your own ideas then there's no way you can make a full-time living as a writer. You have to be prepared to write other people's ideas as well to pay the bills. That's also how you learn and hone your craft.
That's one of the big mistakes amateurs make, only wanting to work on their script or their life story or their one big idea. The ones who make a living have done all sorts."

And apparently the local industry here is healthier than it has been for sometime and Peter Gawler, Underbelly writer, is seeing a shift towards scripts with an Australian voice.  He says, "We do have our own style of telling stories in this country.  I don't think we are terribly good at high concepts. We're much better at a form of social realism the refects the Australian no-bullshit no-fuss approach." I wonder whether that is reflected in our literature, especially our children's literature.