Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I would like to echo the member for Rankin’s thoughts on congratulating the members of the Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts: Julie Owens, the member for Parramatta; Bronwyn Bishop, the member for Mackellar; Alan Griffin; Michael Johnson; Andrew Laming; John Murphy; Peter Garrett; Chris Hayes; Michael Keenan; and Ken Ticehurst. We had a lot of travel together and companionship in preparing the report Digital television: who’s buying it? and I would like to thank them for the academic work as well as for the good times. I would also like to thank the committee secretariat. I think often we get carried away with the membership of our committees, but a lot of the work in terms of organisation and the presentation of witnesses is done by the committee secretary, Dr Anna Dacre; the inquiry secretary, Mr Anthony Overs; and our administrative officer, Mrs Emma Martin. I extend my thanks to them as, unfortunately, I was unable to when I tabled the report, because I ran out of time in the main chamber. So I would like to put that on the record now.

We received 97 submissions, so the other people I would like to thank are, obviously, everyone involved in preparing those submissions for the committee. We also had a number of days of hearings and a number of people come and speak to us personally. In particular, I would like to thank Paul Jenkins, the General Manager, Marketing and Martin Laverty, Government Counsel, Burson-Marsteller, acting for LG Electronics Australia Pty Ltd. I would also like to thank Ross Henderson, Director of Panasonic AVC Networks Australia, and Digital Media Support Manager, Rick Naylor, as well as Keith Perkins from Retravision. It was very helpful to get a position from manufacturers and retailers, and that certainly influenced this report. I only wish that more retailers and manufacturers had come forward and had their say.

The other significant submission that I thought worthy of mention is that by Mr Gary Lamb, Managing Director of GfK Marketing Services, which has done an in-depth analysis of the digital television market which supplements the one we get from the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. I am currently involved in amendments in the House regarding the aptitude of our bureaucrats. I am sure they do a great job, but it was great having the private sector input from GfK marketing. We also went to Perth and spoke to Professor Duane Varan, the Executive Director of the Interactive Television Research Institute. It is really quite amazing what is possible with digital TV and the interactivity we can have in the future. Some of the demonstrations they gave and some of the research they were doing into people’s viewing habits, how people watch television and how they interact socially was quite amazing.

As I said in my foreword, I remember as a young probation and parole officer—one of my first jobs out of university—visiting the parents of young offenders. You could gauge quite a lot from those visits. One of the immutable facts was the lounge lined up around the television. I recall in one instance the television was even turned on for the entire time I was interviewing the parents—in fact, they were watching television. So I think television has a lot to answer for. Nonetheless, the committee came to the conclusion that television is an essential service. We rate it in terms of poverty. If you do not have access to a colour television, you are basically impoverished in Australia. If you are a landlord in Queensland and your tenant wants pay TV, you are obliged to subscribe to services and install the wiring. Television really is moving towards what is an essential service.

How do you move this forward? How do you move it to the next level of technology? To that end, Debra Richards, the Executive Director of the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association, ASTRA, gave a wonderful presentation of the marketing campaign done in the subscription sector where in 12 months, using Hugh Jackman in an advertising campaign, they moved 75 per cent of their subscription viewers to digital. There had been a zero take-up but within 12 months of the campaign the take-up was 75 per cent. The only thing they did was have a marketing campaign. The hurdle to get viewers switched on to digital in the subscription sector was much larger. They had to ring up to subscribe, they had to book a time for the person to come out and install the new set-top box, they had to pay more and learn a bunch of new controls whereas the level of entry into the free-to-air digital area is much cheaper—the committee estimates 50 bucks by 2010 or 2011.

With the major television stations looking at loss of audience, I think they will be motivated to do something similar to subscription services in driving campaigns. They know their audience. They did not want to see analog switched off and lose audience share. So they are very keen to get out there and do it. We think that is probably where the drive should lie. It should lie with free-to-air television stations pushing their own barrow and being responsible for their own audience capture.

With the sales and services that the retail market can deliver, to compete they might say, ‘We  will sell you the set-top box and install it for you.’ Also, the consumer will decide whether they want multichannelling or high definition television; hence, we put the restriction on any reduction in the HD quota until after the analog has been switched off so that the market has an opportunity to determine and decide HD characteristics and which way the consumer wants to go in purchasing a set-top box.

Obviously, a HD set-top box is going to be more expensive. If you have gone for that extra expense, you want some sort of stability in that set-top box being future proofed; hence, the requirement for over-the-air downloads by the manufacturers. With the establishment of a testing and conformance centre, these boxes in the Australian market should be able to be updated by the manufacturers for the next broadcasting technology through over-the-air download to the set-top boxes. If there is a standard conformance and testing centre, each manufacturer can make sure that their download is not going to interfere with other people’s boxes. That is an essential part of the move to digital television, building in some consumer future proofing. One of the things we found was that people tend to sit back and wait for the technology to increase and prices to crash before they invest—‘If I don’t have to invest in a set-top box now, why would I? By 2009 when I do have to make a decision, the technology will be much better and I will be getting a bigger bang for my buck.’

If at that stage people want to buy in at the top end of the set-top box market, let us make sure that they are getting some longevity for their purchase, given the rapid changeover in the broadcasting technologies. We are now seeing terrific compression technologies which will allow HD multichannelling into the future. But, for that to proceed, we do not want to be giving the spectrum that government has back to the broadcasters for more simulcasts. We want them to work within their own seven kilohertz of spectrum and not be coming back to government all the time for more spectrum just so that they can maintain audience capture.

The inquiry was a really interesting and thoroughly enjoyable exercise. I might take the opportunity now to finish a few of the comments that I started in the main chamber and did not get a chance to finish. I think I am going to run out of time again, but I congratulate the chair on this procedure. When people have done so much work on a report, it is wonderful to have an opportunity, as we do here, to discuss it and let all the members, not just the chair and the deputy chair, have a say about their contribution and their efforts. I commend this particular practice and hope it continues. Perhaps after the member for Lowe has spoken I might have an opportunity to finish the speech which I wrote for the main chamber.

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