Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

The following points are relevant in relation to the Communications Legislation Amendment (Enforcement Powers) Bill 2006. Firstly, from 2007, licences for new digital services will be provided over unallocated broadcasting spectrum and will be allocated in accordance with the amended digital broadcasting regulatory framework to be established under the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television) Bill 2006 and associated bills. Against that background, datacasting services will be competing with other broadcasting services and, as such, it is reasonable to expect that they should be regulated in a similar manner to broadcasting services.

In order to ensure a consistent regulatory framework between such licences and broadcasting licences, amendments will be required to the Communications Legislation Amendment (Enforcement Powers) Bill 2006. In particular, the amendments will provide for the following: first, a power for ACMA to see injunctions for the unlicensed provision of datacasting services; second, the establishment of an unlicensed provision of datacasting services and breaches of datacasting conditions so that they are subject to civil penalties; third, the creation of a power for ACMA to issue remedial directions to take action to prevent the provision of an unlicensed datacasting service with breaches of such remedial directions to be offences and subject to civil penalties; fourth, civil penalties to be established for breaches of remedial directions relating to datacasting licence conditions; fifth, the establishment of civil penalties for breach of datacasting licence conditions; sixth, the development of ACMA guidelines about its enforcement powers so as to also deal with those powers relating to datacasting; and, seventh, civil penalties to be considered in assessing the suitability of a licensee.

Against that background, and in the context of the full suite of media and communications reforms, I commend these amendments to the House and I commend the bill to the House. I thank the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan, and the officers of her department and her personal staff. I am delighted to commend both the bill and the amendments to the House.

Question agreed to.

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