Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to give my support, as other members have done, to the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Digital Television Switch-over) Bill 2009. As we all know, all free-to-air broadcasters are preparing for the complete changeover from analog to digital broadcasting. We will see a complete switch-over by the end of 2013. I am sure everyone agrees that that will come very quickly when we are talking about a change of this magnitude. This legislation is about preparing regional communities, and in particular pensioners, carers and veterans, to ease them through the transition.

Two things are abundantly clear in the story of switching over to digital television. The first is that digital broadcasting is an important tool for driving Australia into the 21st century. The second is that there are costs involved in implementing the change—and they are unavoidable costs for members of the public. For individuals, this cost can be as low as $30 or $40 for a basic set-top box. These set-top boxes simply adapt current televisions to digital and open up the full suite of digital options. Nonetheless, this legislation is about making sure that pensioners, carers and veterans are able to make the change and receive the support they need to do so. This bill is about balancing the need to switch off the old analog system and replace it with digital against the need to make sure lower income households are neither burdened with a financial strain that they cannot carry nor left facing unnecessary confusion.

This bill will deliver an assistance program to households in regions that will make the switch from analog to digital television between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2011. A household will qualify for the program when one or more residents is in receipt of the maximum rate of the age pension, disability support pension, carer payment, Department of Veterans’ Affairs service pension or income support supplement. The program will provide and install a high definition set-top box and also undertake any remedial upgrade to the household’s cabling or antenna, where it is required, at no cost to the recipient. That is very good news to lower income households on those pensions and support payments.

I have had a bit of a taste of just how much awareness, interest, confusion and concern there is out there in the community about the advent of digital television, particularly in our regional community. By publicising in our local media that I would make available an information kit in my office I have found out that there are definitely sectors of the community that are seeking more knowledge about the implications of the digital television switch-over. After all, for every person in our community with a plasma TV with a built-in digital receiver, there are similar numbers of people with older televisions, who have not yet focused completely on the digital television changes.

Over the last few months my office in Rockhampton has been receiving ongoing calls from community members wanting to know more about digital television, which is coming very soon. With the changeover being in the media more this year and with the imminent trial in Mildura, Victoria, the number of calls increased. I have also been asked to speak at a meeting of the National Union of Retired Workers, led by Jim Lawler and Dale Langford, who are very active in my electorate. They have also been putting the case to me on behalf of the pensioners and retired people whom they represent. With this in mind, I put together a short booklet detailing the digital changeover, as per the time frame set down by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. I publicised this booklet in our local media, and the number of calls from people seeking this booklet and its information was quite incredible. We had dozens of people requesting this information. They all had questions. They all wanted to know what digital television would mean to them, how it would affect their viewing, what sort of equipment they would have to purchase and when they would have to purchase it by.

Without being too general, far and away the biggest demographic of callers was the elderly in our community. These people are in the demographic that this bill protects the most, and rightly so. The whole exercise with this digital television booklet was a perfect example of why legislation like this is so important. After all, we are talking about a bigger change to television than that which took place with the change from black and white television to colour television, which I am sad to say I remember very vividly as a young child. It is all feeling like a very long time ago, I am sad to say. This type of information, along with the current, successful ad campaign from the Australian Communications and Media Authority and the new labels on televisions in stores, is helping consumers as we move to the digital television changeover.

So whether someone is young or old or whether they are tech-savvy or not, the government is doing its best to make sure that it is providing current and clear information. There are already wide sectors of the community in my own electorate in central Queensland who have embraced digital TV. But this legislation is for those who are in receipt of pensions, carers payments and DVA payments, who are probably among those in the community who still have a lot of questions and a lot of confusion and who are thinking twice about what these changes mean and whether digital TV is something that they can afford to get involved in—and of course the answer is yes.

It is critical that this bill secures passage through parliament now. The deadlines set down for digital changeover are fast approaching, and the test case for the changeover in Mildura, Victoria, is due in just a few months, in August and September of this year. We need to make sure that this legislation kicks off in July this year so that the country and those communities at the sharp end of this change are prepared—and after that, of course, the rollout will happen across the country in the next couple of years.

The progression will be gradual. That is obviously a sensible way to roll out the change when we are talking about something of this magnitude, as it will affect almost each and every Australian household. The rollout is starting in Mildura, and then it moves to regional South Australia and other parts of regional Victoria, followed by regional Queensland. This includes areas in my electorate, which will switch over between 1 July 2011 and 31 December 2011. As I said before, all up, the digital changeover will be complete by the end of 2013. But for people in my electorate 2011 will be upon us quicker than we realise.

As we heard in the second reading speech made by the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, the timing is so critical because Centrelink needs the legislative authority to be able to use protected information that it holds regarding recipients of the payments I have already mentioned. In addition, Centrelink needs to be able to provide information about qualified customers to the contractors engaged to supply the Digital Switch-over Household Assistance Program. This is an important part of the bill and the time frame that we are talking about, because these amendments will ensure that Centrelink and the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy do not breach the confidentiality provisions of the social security law. They will allow Centrelink to use information currently within their systems to advise customers of their qualification for, and to invite them to participate in, this program. Information supplied to contractors will be limited to that strictly necessary for the implementation of the program.

It is worth noting, so soon after the budget, that this legislation is just one demonstration of the many ways this government is committed to helping pensioners, carers and veterans. The government has just delivered a budget with the broadest reforms to the pension since it was introduced 100 years ago. The government has taken those steps in the budget in response to the Harmer report, which highlighted what many of us who work in the community have known for some time—that, for many pensioners, the rates of the pension have not been enough to meet the rising cost of living for some years. In response to that, the government, in the budget a couple of weeks ago, provided for an increase to singles on the full rate of the pension of $32.49 per week. An increase of $10.14 per week is also available to couples on the pension. This legislation is one more way that we can take some pressure off pensioners and recognise that they do need assistance with the cost of living.

Australia is one of many countries changing from analog to digital television. In Europe, Sweden and the Netherlands have already changed and countries such as the UK and Germany are embarking on the change. Digital television is about more than just sharper images and clearer sound, although these are of course two of the biggest and most obvious benefits. Digital television is about options. It will allow for an increased number of channels and different viewing sizes to cater for different sized televisions. It will allow greater flexibility for people to watch their favourite shows, as evidenced already by ABC2, where a large number of ABC shows are shown at different times of the day. There are plenty of people in Capricornia who work irregular hours and shifts, especially in the mining industry but also in the health and emergency services sector—and, of course, not forgetting our farmers. I am sure they will be pleased to have this increased flexibility when it comes to making sure they can watch their favourite shows.

While this legislation deals largely with more elderly sections of the community, it will also cover carer payment recipients, some of whom have children. This will be of benefit to those families. But, beyond that, digital television is set to be a big win for families in other ways. I was pleased to see just last month the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy announce our government’s commitment to a dedicated ABC children’s digital TV channel. It will offer high quality, educational, commercial-free viewing options for families, broadcasting children’s content for 15 hours a day and offering interactive and online content. As a parent of two young children, I can testify to the value of such a channel. It was an idea put forward in the 2020 Summit and backed up with funding in the budget earlier this month. As announced in the budget, the government will provide the ABC with $136.4 million in new funding over the next triennium to support the children’s channel and also to increase Australian drama content on the national broadcaster.

There is another way in which I hope digital television will benefit the communities in my electorate and that is through the establishment of our own community television broadcaster. As I understand it, the switch to digital and the turning off of the analog signal will free up a significant amount of spectrum that will be able to be used for additional services. One possibility is the introduction of community television in areas where that has not previously been available. I am pleased to say that already there is a group in central Queensland led by Brad Keyworth and David Anderson that is putting together just such a proposal for our area. Brad and David have turned their considerable industry expertise toward the development of a channel devoted to telling our local stories. It has been a long journey for Brad and David and their committee and there is still a long way to go. But there is tremendous support for their initiative across the community as evidenced by the backing they have received from local councils and business sponsors. I will continue to work with Brad and David and the people associated with CQTV as they negotiate their way through the technical processes involved in spectrum allocation and, ultimately, in their application for a broadcasting licence. It is a very exciting initiative and one that I fully support.

In the meantime, the government has clearly signalled that it recognises the importance of locally based media production in regional areas. We need a way to communicate our own local stories to the people of our region and also to distribute them to a broader audience. So I was very pleased to see in the budget the additional money—$15.3 million over three years—under the Rural and Regional National Broadband Network Initiative which will deliver more than 50 enhanced ABC local broadband hubs in regional Australia. According to the minister in his announcement of this program, the ABC will:

… encourage and assist the development of user generated content and create online avenues for local communities to connect and collaborate. The ABC will establish community websites and portals, and create ‘virtual town squares’ for communities to share experiences.

That is something that I think will be very popular in my area. I can see that there will be quite a big take-up and participation in that kind of interactive media production. The teams at the ABC in Rockhampton and Mackay are very well connected in our local community and are the right people to encourage the kind of participation and collaboration that that funding will facilitate and promote. It will enable local people in central Queensland to generate stories and take part in being able to tell our own local stories for a local audience.

There is no doubt that this is a big change. It is one that will be welcomed by all in the community and it is very important. The government has recognised the importance of making sure that everyone in the community can participate in this change and can derive the benefits and not feel that they are being excluded in any way on the basis that they are on low or fixed incomes. This bill has my strong support and I encourage those people in my community who continue to have questions about digital television as we embark on this journey towards the changeover in central Queensland to keep in touch and make sure that they are availing themselves of all the assistance and all the information they need.

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