Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Hansard source

We welcome the government recognising the merit of some of the opposition’s amendments. What is worth drawing to the attention of the House is that what is actually being rejected by the government is the establishment of switch-off readiness criteria. These are objective criteria that would have let all the viewing public know at what point the government thought it was appropriate to switch off analog television. We believe that is a sensible, reasonable, thoughtful amendment. Most people thought that, except the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, and the government. We were actually seeking to save Senator Conroy from himself and make it clear what was needed, what policy requirements needed to be met, before analog television is switched off and before possibly tens of thousands of viewers are left with no television whatsoever.

Strangely, the government has rejected that proposition. It has rejected a process where, having established those minimum analog switch-off standards, there would be a reporting arrangement six months before there is no more analog television to account for progress with the conversion, to take account of areas where there was not a level of readiness that would support such a switch-over and to put a positive onus on the government to take action to address that. How on earth the opposition could just stand here and listen to the government arguing that that somehow impeded the process is just beyond me. It is absolute nonsense. I do not think anybody who has any familiarity with this could possibly endorse what the government is saying about our amendments somehow impeding or compromising the switch-off process. It is just ridiculous. We were not adjusting the dates in any way. We were not at all changing the spirit or intent of the legislation but in fact carrying forward a vision for digital television established by the then coalition government.

What we were aiming to do was make sure that the public was informed and that the minister was accountable. As we have seen, over and over again, whenever there is some effort to scrutinise the actions of the government and hold the minister accountable, the argument from the government is: ‘You are holding up the whole show.’ That is just ridiculous but it is a mantra we are used to now, and it has come out again in the case of this digital television legislation.

We want to hold the government to account to try and make sure viewers are factored into the government’s decision making so that when there is no more analog television it is done on the basis of clear, objective criteria. That is all—no imposition, no holding up, no blackballing, no nothing; just some accountability—and we have seen how the government has responded to that. That balanced and reasonable proposal has been rejected by the government. So be it. The opposition are not going to die in a ditch over that because we actually thought that would help the government. We believed that openness would be helpful for the process. Instead, we have seen the government trying to shirk any responsibility about establishing a degree of readiness before a switch-over, and it is just appalling.

Why might they do that? Why might they oppose an amendment that had at its heart the interest of viewers? All we can imagine is that this will be a shut-down whatever happens, and when questions are asked about why now is the time we will simply get the WIJI: ‘Well, it just is.’ ‘Well, it just is’ will be the answer and there will be no basis to engage in a discussion about whether that is a reasonable conclusion or not. Or—and I fear this is the real reason—the spectrum is valuable. The coalition set the nation on the course for digital television and, as part of that process, loaned spectrum to the broadcasters so they could broadcast digital and analog television through this simulcast period. Once analog is shut off, that spectrum becomes available—and that spectrum is invisible gold. It is incredibly valuable and, no doubt, with the parlous state of the budget and the abandonment of some of the economic responsibilities of the coalition government, the Labor government will be busting to get their hands on that spectrum. They will be hungrily trying to get hold of the value of that spectrum to hand over to the states or to prop up a deteriorating budget. That may be what this is about. That may be why they would junk a proposal from the Senate, developed by the opposition, to make it clear whether a community was ready to have its analog television sets shut off and blacked out—no more transmission. Why would they do that? Because they want to get their hands on the spectrum. This could well be another phase of Khemlani—or ‘Kevlani’, in this case. Rather than running off to get some petrodollars, they have thought, ‘That is not publicly saleable; let’s run off and grab hold of the revenue that comes from the spectrum.’ (Time expired)

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