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

No, it would not. The whole idea of the review is to test how these limits will work. The review will give the minister the necessary background to adjust the levels and the requirement for differential usage across Australia, if it is deemed appropriate.

I think 4½ hours of a 24-hour broadcasting schedule is not unreasonable. That means coming in in the morning and broadcasting from 5.30 or six o’clock, perhaps through to nine or 10 o’clock, when you might put on John Laws, Charles Wooley or Hadley or one of the other network programs from Sydney, then perhaps broadcasting for an hour or two at midday. It is not a huge requirement; 4½ hours is barely one shift for one announcer. Again, I think some of the stations have been quite disingenuous to say, ‘That will force us to close our station.’ I find that very hard to take seriously, quite frankly, especially with one or two of the big networks. But let us say the requirement is 4½ hours.

The other requirement we wish to place on radio stations is to broadcast 12½ minutes a day of locally derived and presented news. That would be five bulletins of 2½ minutes or perhaps six bulletins of two minutes. You would find that most ABC regional stations do that without any trouble at all. On ABC radio in the country at six, seven, eight, nine and 10 o’clock every day you can get a local bulletin. In some of the bigger ABC stations you get them at drive time as well.

What would that mean? We have heard, ‘That will mean we’ve got to put two journalists in every station, and we’ve got to do this and we’ve got to do that.’ I know three stations where there is a part-time female journalist. She starts at about 5.30 in the morning; she does bulletins on the hour at six, seven, eight, nine, 10 and, I think 11 o’clock; and she probably puts one in the can for the midday news before she goes home. She probably does 5½ hours a day, five days a week. That is 27½ hours of a journalist. That is not a huge requirement by any standard, because 27½ hours of a journalist’s wage will not cripple any station—or very few. What it will do is to give people in some of those markets a chance to hear local news, not just to listen to endless piped music or news bulletins of, in many cases, doubtful significance to that community. We have seen some of that on programs like Media Watch in recent times where any sort of thing goes for the bush. The particular girl I was talking about does the news for three radio stations at about 27½ hours a week. So I think we are being handed up a lot of scare tactics.

We are also going to require that those news bulletins cannot be just endlessly repeated. There needs to be an effort to look for news stories around the town: what happened in court that day, what the city and shire councils are doing, what the police have been up to, what is the latest from the local hospital, what is happening in the rural and regional areas, what is happening in local sport and so on. There is no end of sources for local content if people are serious. The minister’s bill requires only five weather bulletins a week. I presume that means a larger bulletin where, if you are on the coast, you would get surf conditions, wind conditions, fishing conditions and all those sorts of things, and the weather and rainfall reports for the various regions in the district.

I would like to return briefly to a point that the member for Hindmarsh raised in his speech. I think that the nub of this legislation is the number of voices in any given media market. I think it would have been intolerable to allow any person in a regional market of six or seven voices to have control of the newspaper, the two radio stations—which constitute one voice—and the newspaper. That would have been, to me, oppressively wrong. It would have given an interventionist proprietor or a zealot editor a chance to really influence three forms of media. It would also have had implications for how diverse and competitive advertising rates are in a particular market. For that reason, I fought very hard right through this whole campaign for two out of three in the country. In other words, you could have any two of those mediums but not all three.

The government, through its party room and in its wisdom, decided to extend that to the capital cities, and I thought that was a great measure. While it will allow some concentration, it will not allow anyone to become a dominant player. Using the case of Adelaide, as the member for Hindmarsh did, there is the Adelaide Advertiser, the three TV stations, radio 5AA, one other news station and a number of music stations. It would have been intolerable for someone to own the Advertiser, the TV station and, say, the talk station or the other news station. Two out of three puts the brake on excesses in those markets—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth in particular.

Diversity of sources of opinion on our airwaves, particularly in regional areas, is paramount. It is totally unacceptable for one proprietor to own the triple—as I talked about before—and to perhaps exchange news between the three mediums. Imagine what sort of two-dimensional biased media that could be if someone had control of it or if you had an interventionist proprietor. So I support the four voices view in country areas and five in the capital cities—but with that overriding three out of four rule.

Probity is the final issue. I believe that all companies and proprietors holding radio or television licences must be able to demonstrate a clear and transparent ownership structure. So I applaud the planned introduction of a register of controllers to be maintained by ACMA. The register will identify the controllers of commercial radio and television licences and associated newspapers in each licence area in the event of any ownership changes. It should not be possible for one company or proprietor to exercise, by way of financial or programming control, influence over another proprietor or company. I hope that those things which the minister will be taking on board after the Elmie case will lead to greater probity and will, in turn, ensure that we end up with competition, diversity and localism out of these bills. I commend these bills to the House.

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