Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 will help expand the range of television services available to people living in remote areas of Australia and was developed with communities in remote Western Australia specifically in mind. In effect, the bill was developed to allow commercial television broadcasting licensees in remote licence areas to jointly multichannel their digital services, if they chose to do so. It will also give a single broadcaster the option of providing a third digital-only service as an individual entity under section 38B of the Broadcasting Services Act.

These amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and the Radiocommunications Act 1992 will give licensees an exemption from any mandatory high-definition quotas where they elect to provide a third digital-only commercial service and multichannel their digital television services. This bill was developed with the specific cases of WIN and Prime in Western Australia in mind, where they are converting their television services from analog to digital in remote areas of Western Australia. It will allow these two broadcasters to adopt more flexible technical and programming solutions in the outlying areas of Western Australia by letting them share digital transmission infrastructure. I commend this. I think it is a very practical and sensible measure.

The government recognises that regional commercial broadcasters face proportionately greater costs in establishing digital television compared, say, with those in metropolitan areas. It just stands to reason that anywhere in regional Australia, in country areas, economies of scale will be a lot more strained, but when you get to Western Australia they are strained even further. To illustrate this, in Prime’s case I understand that around 200 digital transmitters are needed to stretch across regional Australia for it to reach a potential audience of 4.8 million people. In comparison, a mere half-a-dozen transmitters are required by Sydney metropolitan broadcasters to reach almost the same number—a potential, in that case, of 4.3 million people. So here you have 200 transmitters for 4.8 million people and there you have six or so transmitters for nearly 4½ million people. When you consider the costs associated with broadcasting digital transmissions, licensees in remote areas have the additional expense of installing satellite and microwave bearer networks, which are needed to deliver the broadcast signal to the transmitters. Of course, other things like maintenance are also a quite heavy burden. I welcome the government’s contribution of $19 million towards this program. It was long awaited and will be of great benefit to people in the remote parts of Western Australia—in fact, just about all of Western Australia outside the Perth area.

The measures contained in the bill have been drafted to allow incumbent broadcasters in a two-commercial operated regional market to jointly or individually provide a third digital-only television service. That is not just for Western Australia; parts of the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales have similar problems. Licensees electing to provide a third jointly operated service will do so using a full seven megahertz digital channel and will be subject to the requirements to provide a quota of programming in high-definition digital mode. However, if one of the licensees individually provides the additional service, under section 38B that licensee can choose to multichannel the digital transmission of the parent service and provide the new service in standard definition digital mode using a single seven megahertz channel, with an exemption from high-definition television requirements. Some purists will say, ‘That’s not good enough for the bush.’ I think this is a very good compromise. Standard definition is going to be such an improvement over the current analog services, especially in a remote area, that I think most people will be more than happy and grateful to have it. I, for one, am not a great devotee of the high-definition medium itself, although I recognise that a lot of people want it. I like digital television for the range of services that it can potentially provide.

The arrangements we have been talking about, which would soften the rules, might not have been in the best interests of the television stations—or the viewers in remote parts of Australia—if the stations had been pinned down to more prescriptive transmission requirements. Had there not been common sense on the part of existing broadcasters and the government, people in the remote areas of Western Australia may never have seen the best features of digital television. The needs of audiences in regional Australia coupled with the regulatory requirements for local content prohibit regional broadcasters from simply providing a homogenised program and advertising feed to all regional areas. They should not be allowed to do that anyhow. As much localism as possible should be introduced into news bulletins, for example, and advertising should be relevant to the market. It is a criticism of some of the satellite services that you get advertising that is in no way relevant to your area.

Regional broadcasters have an obligation to service their smaller submarkets in order to meet audience need and to comply with government regulations. They must also be able to maintain their commercial viability, which is the other side of the coin. All Australians, regardless of where they live, should have access to a superior television viewing experience, and that superior experience comes from digital services. Digital television offers viewers greater picture clarity and enhanced sound. Digital television is broadcast in wide-screen format—the 9:16 ratio—which certainly gives you a greatly enhanced picture. It also has the capacity for subsidiary channels, multichannelling and interactive services and will eventually deliver different forms of datacasting which will extend the function of our television sets.

The member for Oxley made some interesting points. I stand to be corrected on this, but I think the government’s original intention was that the switch-off date would not be for 10 years and that either an agreement with, or an amendment by, the Democrats brought that back to 2008. Certainly 2010 is a more realistic date. I hope that it does not go out to 2012. I favour some further relaxation of multichannelling. I know there are balances in multichannelling between the free-to-airs—the ABC and SBS and the commercials—on the one hand and pay television on the other hand. I am not suggesting that there should be a bloodbath in that respect. But while I welcome the multichannelling announcement of the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts I urge her and the government to bring that forward as much as possible. If we want people to take up digital television we must provide them with a greater television experience. My view is that, notwithstanding the fact that the ABC’s second channel and SBS’s news channel are both good services, they need greater enhancement. I welcome the lifting of the genre restrictions on the ABC and SBS and I think, as the member for Oxley said, there is a case for increasing the funding of the ABC so it can build good programming formats around the lifting of the genre restrictions.

I welcomed in this year’s budget the extra $88 million to the ABC which allowed it to put $13 million into country areas and $30 million into drama. I thought that was a great thing. If the ABC is not doing drama at a high standard it will be hard to get other people in Australia to do it. We should provide avenues for the young people we train in this country to have a future in theatre and television. We can do that only if we enhance the new mediums in such a way that drama is called for. A second digital channel—not only for the ABC and SBS but perhaps even for the commercials—would give the drama and production industry of television a great boost. As I have said, we need localism wherever possible. We need diversity and we need competition. In Western Australia, for example, there will now be three commercial channels to choose from.

We should bring forward the multichannelling agenda. That is important from the point of view of encouraging the public to buy sets. If I were a passive person—identified, like the member for Oxley was, from that survey—I do not think that I would be rushing out to buy a digital television set. One of the things I would like to see in the three commercial sectors would be a subsidiary channel showing two football games on a Sunday. Why are we restricted to one? Why can we not have the game of the day in high definition and the second game on a subsidiary channel? Say there is a game of state or interstate interest. In the NRL, for example, if the Broncos are playing the Cowboys there will be great Queensland interest. If two South Australian teams are playing in the AFL there will be a great deal of intrastate interest.

It is a bit strange that we cannot have a second game on the subsidiary channel. It is a great medium. We have great sport in this country. All three of the commercial channels from time to time have paid huge money for broadcasting rights. It is churlish to have tough or tougher antisiphoning rules on the one hand and to restrict the ability in some ways of the television stations to be able to get the maximum benefit out of live television on the other. I am not suggesting, in using a multichannelling facility, that we should necessarily allow two night games. I am talking about Saturday, Sunday and public holidays. Perhaps at night the channels should be required to show a regular program and one game. These things have to be kept in balance. Also, as I said before, the brakes on these things should be taken off with consideration being given to keeping a spirit of balance between the commercials and pay television in the market. You cannot just throw all the balls in the air and hope they will come down with a spirit of fairness.

I also welcome channel A, the digital data facility. I think there is a great opportunity there. In addition to good data services, stock exchange and weather information, rural reports and so on, news with 10-minute film inserts will be of great benefit to busy people who want to get things on the television set. There is a good case for multichannelling. I may be speculating, but a little further down the track, in the markets we have just been talking about in today’s debate, we could give incentives to extend digital data services into remote areas. That might be something that the minister and the department could look into now, rather than have the criticism we have experienced today of leaving this a bit late.

We will also have channel B, which will be for handheld devices. You have only to see how young people are engaging with these new forms of communication—the internet, television, iPods and all sorts of other things—to know that that will eventually become a very popular medium. I also welcome the minister’s announcement that channel B will go onto a neutral platform and that there will be strict access arrangements. I think access arrangements in Australia could be a lot better in a lot of fields, not just in broadcast communications but also in telecommunications. I have great ambivalence about what has been going on with Telstra; I also think that the pay agenda on television could have been handled a lot better and a lot more fairly when that was rolled out some years ago. I will not comment further on that, because it is a matter before the courts, other than to make that general observation.

You can see that we are moving into very interesting times, and for people in remote Western Australia this is the first step forward. I would encourage the government and the department not only to look at providing this third channel for people in remote Western Australia and later on in other remote parts of Australia but also to see how we can get other services to them so that in the fullness of time they too can enjoy the benefits of digital television. I commend the bill to the Main Committee.

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