Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Grayndler for his contribution to the debate today. We appreciate the fact that the Labor Party will be supporting this bill in the House. The bill at hand makes a number of changes to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to facilitate the commencement of the National Indigenous Television service later this year. The regulatory regime established by the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 creates various obligations on broadcasters. Section 212 of the act specifically exempts from most legal and regulatory obligations services that are merely unaltered retransmissions of the signals from a commercial, national or community broadcaster. However, there is currently no similar exemption for retransmission of signals from narrowcasters. This means that, without this bill, retransmission of National Indigenous Television programming will not be covered by the exemptions offered to the other broadcasters under section 212. Many remote Indigenous communities will retransmit NITV programming from the satellite, as do the ABC, SBS and the commercial services.

The legislation is vital for the future distribution of NIT programming. If it were not to go through, retransmitters in remote areas would be liable for broadcasting without the appropriate licence and would be theoretically responsible for the content of the service. They would also be financially liable to the underlying right holders for payments of royalties. The minor amendment proposed by this bill will not only protect Indigenous communities doing no more than retransmitting NITV programming but also remove any disincentive for other carriers, such as pay TV broadcasters, to carry NITV programming by extending the statutory licensing scheme in part VC of the Copyright Act 1968 to apply to retransmission of that programming. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.

See this speech in context