Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

We have had a situation where his neglect of the important matters in this bill has no doubt been attributable to his distraction over all of these other pieces of unfinished business.

I want now to move on to the matter that the House committee has considered and one that is related to this bill, and it is an example of very disturbing mismanagement of this department and this issue of spectrum. It relates to the handling of wireless audio devices. These are the wireless audio products such as radio microphones, and I will refer to them as radio microphones. They are a huge range of devices, ranging from devices used in entertainment venues, by gym instructors, at a function centres and in church halls. They are all of those radio microphones that form part of our lives. No one really knows how many there are out there. The figures are somewhere at 120,000 to 150,000. They operate in the same piece of the radio spectrum as analogue television broadcasting: 520 to 820 megahertz frequency. They operate in the white space, in the gaps between the pieces of spectrum that are being used by the broadcasters. Their users comprise every possible organisation. I am sure most honourable members would have one or two of these devices in their own electorate offices for public meetings. Users include everybody from the Opera House in Sydney down to the theatre in the school hall.

As part of this digital switchover, a large chunk of this spectrum—694 to 820 megahertz—will be auctioned and made available for 4G wireless broadband, and that spectrum will begin to be populated by the wireless broadband users from 2015 if not earlier, as this bill would allow. The Australian Wireless Audio Group estimates that 80 per cent of the wireless audio device users which are currently operating in this white space in the 700 megahertz band will find that the spectrum they have been using will no longer be available to them once the auction process is complete. They estimate that at least 120,000 units or devices will be redundant by 1 January 2015. When I say 'redundant', they will not be able to be used without the potential either of interference with them from the telcos' use of the digital dividend spectrum or the wireless audio devices themselves interfering with the wireless broadband services that are available on people's smart phones and other 4G devices. The Australian Wireless Audio Group estimates that these radio mikes underpin $32 million of economic activity and the employment of more than 140,000 people. As was made apparent in the course of the very brief enquiry that the committee held into this bill, even though it is abundantly clear that the ACMA and the department have known about this problem for years, there has still not been any decision made as to what spectrum will be available for those devices in the future.

It is perfectly obvious that what should have happened is that, with a very long lead time, the department and ACMA should have concluded what the new home for these devices would be and then given plenty of notice and conducted some form of public information campaign so that the users of these radio microphone devices would have ample time to buy new devices, or, when they bought new devices, ensure that they were tunable or usable in the new spectrum.

The equipment we are talking about generally has a useful life of approximately 10 years. Regrettably, because of the government's inaction, this equipment will soon become unusable, yet it is still being imported and sold to consumers, users and organisations without their being made aware that rather getting a 10-year investment, they may, if they are lucky, only get one year's use from it. Many if not most of the users of this wireless audio equipment are relatively unsophisticated in terms of their understanding of how these products work. Many operate in a plug-and-play mode with limited tunability. This means many of these users are not aware of what frequency their device is operating in and are therefore unaware of the consequences of the restack. At present there is no formal requirement that devices being imported that operate in the digital dividend spectrum either cease to be imported or that suppliers be required to notify consumers of the potential impact of the spectrum auction.

The government has put the onus on the wireless audio device users to contact suppliers about the future functionality of their equipment despite there being no formal education and communication campaign to inform suppliers and users of the regulatory environment in which they will be operated. For that reason we welcome the recommendation by the house committee inquiry into this bill that the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, along with the ACMA, instigate an education awareness campaign as well as a formal product-notification warning system to ensure that purchasers of new equipment know about its possible limited utility after the restack.

But, while there needs to be greater awareness of this issue, the government simply does need to do more. It needs to address it. It needs to ensure that the 120,000 to 150,000 wireless audio device users who will be affected by the restack will be accommodated for. In other words, ACMA and the department have to decide what their new spectrum home will be and then let the users know—and it has to be done now. There seems to be an absolute lack of any sense of urgency on the part of the department officials and ACMA, who gave evidence before the committee.

This bill is predicated on the assumption that this very valuable spectrum—the 'waterfront property' spectrum the government is so desperate to action off—will be clear following the digital switchover. However, the government has absolutely failed to take into account the fact that this very valuable spectrum is occupied by 120,000 to 150,000 users—organisations large and small, for-profit and not-for-profit organisations, churches, gyms, big entertainment centres and schools—and they do not know how they are going to be able to operate their devices and we do not know what sort of problems will arise, in terms of interference, after January.

The successful bidder for the spectrum is going to want to be able to use it. They will have paid very big money, no doubt, to get it. If the government continues along the path they are currently on they will simply be ignoring the problem. It is, I regret to say, a typical 'Conrovian' mismanagement by the senator, and the government, who have been more focused on ensuring that they get the maximum receipt from the auction. They have failed to do the work of clearing the spectrum they are going to sell. They are hoping to get top money, but they have to clear it first and they have to do it in a way that ensures that all of those Australians—in big and small businesses, in not-for-profits and in large corporations—are going to be able to use devices for their work after 1 January 2015.

For that reason, in the committee stage of this debate we will be moving an amendment to the effect that the spectrum that will be made available under this legislation, in advance of the complete clearing of the broadcast bands, cannot be made available unless and until the minister is satisfied that appropriate and adequate provision has been made for the wireless device users I have referred to in my speech today.

This, I grant you, is not the most prominent telecommunications issue of the moment. But if you have a gym, a church hall, and entertainment venue, which could be quite a big one, like the Opera House, and you discover that from 2015 on all of your wireless radio devices cannot work or that instead of hearing the instructions from the gym instructor, or the comments from a teacher or the latest performance of a singer, you are getting any one of our 4G carried wireless conversations, or some music that is being downloaded or some interference caused by some other transmission being caught up in the same frequency, you can imagine that the consequences are going to be shocking. This has the potential of interfering with tens of thousands of businesses and activities, and there is no need for it.

All the government needed to do was to pay attention to the issue. You clear the spectrum. You know a bunch of people using it in the white spaces. That is fine. You have to find a new home for them. You give them plenty of notice. If you do that they will have plenty of time, when buying new equipment, to replace it with equipment that is tunable to the appropriate frequency. And, of course, the importers and the device makers will then know what sort of products to import into and sell in Australia. But everybody is being left in the dark. We were unable to get any satisfactory explanation for this from the department or the ACMA at the hearing—and how could there be? It has simply been overlooked. I have said this a number of times here, but it bears repeating: this is a classic case of the Conrovian mismanagement that is the hallmark of every aspect of this minister's administration, from the spectrum auctions to the anti-siphoning to the NBN to the debacle of the so-called media reform laws that we are, allegedly, going to be considering this week.

The coalition will support the bill, but we believe it should be amended. I say to government members that they would be helping the government—they would be helping the minister, dare I say it—if they were to support the amendment I have foreshadowed, because that would at least ensure that there would be priority and focus given by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and the ACMA to this issue so they could find a new home for these radio microphone users, notify them and give them enough time to make appropriate equipment choices.

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