Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

The Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 is part of the government's so-called regulation repeal day. Most of what is in the bill is part of the routine function of government. The former Labor government repealed 16,794 acts and regulations during its time in office—all part of the ordinary work of government. It is important work, but we did not make a song and dance about it. This government has taken a different approach, holding regulation repeal days and making a lot out of very little.

The first regulation repeal legislation saved the communications industry $35 million. I said at the time that that was in and of itself a good thing, but its value should not be overestimated. You do not put out a press release when you vacuum the lounge room, and that is what the government was effectively doing there. If it was vacuuming the lounge room last year, then this is really a mopping-up of the bathroom, because this bill saves industry just $350,000, according to estimates from the Department of Communications. Having said that, much of the bill is straightforward, and we agree with it.

The purpose of the bill is to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the BSA; the Radiocommunications Act 1992, the RadComms act; and the Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005, the ACMA Act. It does a number of things. Firstly, it removes a number of provisions in the Broadcasting Services Act, which were associated with the simulcast of analog and digital television signals in the transition to digital broadcasting and the restack of spectrum, which commenced after the last analog signal was switched off. Given that digital television rollout is complete, these changes make sense and should be supported.

The bill also amends the framework used by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to plan the broadcasting services band spectrum by removing requirements in the Broadcasting Services Act and the Radcomms Act, which are no longer necessary. The bill also removes the requirement for reports to be made to ACMA under the New Eligible Drama Expenditure Scheme to be independently audited. The opposition is satisfied that compliance with this scheme is of a sufficiently high level and there are alternative mechanisms available for ACMA to ensure this continues to allow the removal of this requirement. The requirement that ACMA reviews industry codes of practice will also be removed under this legislation. The bill also amends the process by which the calculation of media diversity points is made in some commercial radio licence areas and introduces grandfathering provisions for commercial broadcasting licences which would be in breach of the statutory provisions on control as a result of fluctuations in population.

There are, however, some other areas of the bill that are more contentious. The bill makes a number of changes to captioning. For example, it seeks to remove the requirement for free-to-air broadcasters to report annually on compliance with obligations which require them to provide captioning of programs to assist vision- and hearing-impaired consumers with access to electronic media and to replace these obligations with a complaints based assessment process. The legislation also changes aspects of captioning-target obligations for subscription television and the assessment of the quality of captioning of live and pre-recorded broadcasts for free-to-air and subscription broadcasters. It also removes the requirement for a statutory review of captioning obligations.

The opposition has been contacted by representatives of the deaf community who are concerned about these changes. When the minister introduced this bill in the House in October last year, he said:

The ACMA and my department have consulted with industry and key accessibility groups on a range of potential reforms that primarily seek to improve administrative arrangements for the free-to-air broadcasters and subscription television licensees while requiring that they continue to meet their captioning obligations.

It turns out that those assurances that key accessibility groups had been consulted were not entirely accurate. The deaf community does not feel that they were properly consulted on these reforms. Members of Parliament received letters from the Chief Executive Officer of Deaf Australia, advising that Deaf Australia was not consulted on this legislation.

The bipartisan report of the Senate Environment and Communications Committee on this bill was critical of this lack of consultation with the deaf community. The report stated:

The committee notes that a large number of submitters indicated that the consultation process in relation to this bill had been inadequate. The committee agrees that the breadth of consultation in relation to this bill has been insufficient. As a consequence the effect of some of the proposed amendments appears to have been misunderstood, and inadequate attention was given to a range of serious concerns and interests.

This lack of consultation reflects poorly on the minister and on the government. It is their responsibility to make sure that all affected stakeholders are engaged and consulted when legislation before the parliament affects them.

Over the last month the Labor Party has done what the government should have done. We have sat down with deaf advocacy groups and the broadcasting industry and worked through their concerns with the changes that are proposed in this bill. As a result of that work, we have developed a reasonable compromise that both sides have agreed to: that is, 1) restoring the requirement for free-to-air broadcasters to report annually on their compliance with captioning obligations; and 2) restoring the statutory review of captioning to occur in 2016. This will allow a comprehensive review of all of the issues that legitimately concerned both the broadcasters and representatives of the deaf community. I will move amendments to that effect in this debate. I understand those amendments have now been circulated in my name. My office has also consulted with the minister's office on these amendments, and I understand that the government will support them. May I take this opportunity to thank the minister for that and thank his office for the work that they have done with my office on that. This is the sort of work that should have been done by the government. They should have sat down with the deaf community and consulted them on these changes, but they did not do that. They were more concerned with the headlines that come from a set piece regulation-repeal day rather than getting the substance right and making sure that the deaf community are properly consulted. These amendments get the government out of this mess, and I hope they do a better job on consultation with the next regulation repeal bill that they bring to this place.

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