Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was 1957 that television was first introduced in this country. The reruns show Bruce Gyngell hosting the initial broadcast. Unlike many on the committee, Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins, possibly including you, I actually do remember TV at its earliest stage. As a young boy I remember sitting outside the HMV shop waiting for my first sight of Disneyland and seeing Annette Funicello on the Mickey Mouse Club. All these things for a boy living in Dulwich Hill in Sydney were absolutely amazing. Television, when it first came, was very much a luxury item. It was something that we living in a working-class suburb could only go to the shop to see. A lot of the kids growing up in that suburb spent a lot of time at that shop. It might have been a forerunner for childminding centres; I am not quite sure. Quite frankly, we grew up thinking that television was for rich kids.

But, over time, obviously TV became something else. TV has become integral to modern communications. It is part of what keeps people in touch in local communities, and regional communities in particular, and has augmented radio services and provided international news et cetera. Since its introduction, TV has lost its mantle of being a luxury item to the point where most people consider it reasonably essential in the modern family. No longer an item which is simply there for entertainment, it is now essential to modern communication and meeting the demands of a pretty diverse community, enhanced when we moved to broaden that diversity with the establishment of the SBS.

Television as we know it really has brought the world to our living room. I think against that backdrop we are now entering into a new era of television. This is a significant change. When television changed from black and white to colour that, if anything, simply enhanced the image and perhaps the enjoyability of watching golf, cricket and a few other things I tend to watch. But, in terms of making a fundamental change to the delivery pattern of television, digital television has certainly established a new platform for delivery. Digital television will provide not only an enhanced communication medium, pristine imaging, CD quality sound and the prospect of further enhanced contact but also something we would have only dreamed of years ago: the prospect of interactive participation in programming. These changes are so monumental that they are certainly more significant than when we moved from black and white to colour.

The Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, in its efforts to discharge its responsibility and report on its terms of reference, worked particularly well. It had something like 97 separate submissions, 11 public hearings and 46 different witnesses. As a consequence, we produced 12 unanimous recommendations in our report Digital television: who’s buying it?  Being a relatively new member of this parliament, I am not quite sure how many times you get reports of such magnitude with the committee arriving at 12 unanimous recommendations, but that is what occurred on this occasion. I think the goodwill that operated in this committee applied itself in a way that was good not only for those in the radio and television community that appeared before it but also for the consumers of television. It was good that we could have an objective view of what was being put before us by largely competing forces.

There are two recommendations I would particularly like to rely on, as my friend has ably covered others in his report, which I listened to. I would like to comment on the content and quality aspects and particularly recommendation 3, which applies to our national broadcasters—the ABC and SBS. To date, both of those are subject to genre restrictions. There is a prohibition imposed under the Broadcasting Services Act as to what the ABC and SBS can transmit on their two multichannel stations—for instance, ABC2. This is not an argument as to whether there should be separate radio stations for the ABC; they have already clearly established them. Our recommendation went to freeing them from the restriction prohibiting them from carrying certain content on ABC2 and the second SBS station.

The reason for that was not necessarily simply to argue a case in relation to the ABC, because, I dare say, they are adequately equipped for negotiating with the government on that on their own behalf. But it seemed to us as a committee that denying content to those public broadcasters with access to a multichannelled facility is doing nothing to drive the take-up of digital television. Hence, it was a unanimous recommendation of the committee that it should be freed up. Quite frankly, if anything, those second stations should be seen as an attraction of what digital television offers and as assisting the take-up rate of digital television in this country.

The consequence of not doing so is this. It simply means that we prevent the ABC from utilising much of its existing archival material or from time-shifting material from the main station. We prevent the ABC from exploiting its strengths, particularly in relation to current affairs and news. Restriction of the scope for multichannelling also undermines the benefits to audiences of digital television: namely, the provision of greater choice through diversity of programs and services. Our recommendation is that that should be freed up no later than 1 January next year and that its freeing up should be at least considered, in light of our recommendations, as soon as possible.

Having said that, I think it is incumbent on me to say that, if we are going to free that up with a view to acting positively to attract a television audience to a multichannel station, it is necessary that there should be not only a lifting of genre restrictions but also adequate funding put in place to ensure that our national broadcasters can fully exploit the potential of digital television technology in terms of innovative programming and interactive services. We are aware that the ABC’s and the SBS’s triennial funding is coming up for review, and we would strongly urge the government to take this into account when setting the broadcasters’ budget for the next three-year period. As the report indicates, the position of digital television is very strong in this country but we must do more to enhance its pick-up rate. (Time expired)

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