Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying before, this particular bill is fairly routine for government. This particular bill was part of the government's regulation repeal day. They made a big deal about it, yet this bill only saves the industry around $350,000 according to estimates made by the Department of Communications. Having said that, much of this bill is straightforward and we on this side agree with most of it.

The purpose of the bill is to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the Radiocommunications Act 1992 and the Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005. 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 analogue and digital television signals in the transition to digital broadcasting. I want to highlight the word 'transition' because one of the previous speakers, the member for Page, went to great lengths to criticise the previous government for having a transition period, saying that during that period people within his electorate lost their service. When you are transitioning, it does take time. It takes time to make sure you do a rollout properly.

Given the digital television rollout is complete, the changes in this bill make sense and should be supported. It should be noted, however, that these changes in no way will solve the infrastructure issues that the member for Page outlined in his contribution. That is a critical point. In the bush—and I am an MP with a country electorate—most of the issues that we have when it comes to broadcasting go back to old, out-of-date infrastructure and the need for there to be investment in infrastructure.

Bush broadcasting infrastructure is an issue around Australia , including in my own area. Prime, Southern Star and Channel 31 are just a couple of channels that I have received complaints about to do with lack of service and lack of ability to watch. Rarely do I receive a complaint, however, about the broadcasting quality WIN. Perhaps that is because in my part of the world we still have a very active local WIN office. They are very keen to see the people in our area receive good coverage.

I want to take a moment to highlight what WIN are doing in broadcasting and how important they are to our region and why it is important we see that infrastructure flow into regional broadcasting services. WIN are a major partner in our community. Every night WIN delivers local news to rural and regional homes around Australia. It is not just one of Australia's biggest regional news services; it also makes sure that we have news specific to Bendigo. Our local journos do their best to keep up with what is going on locally.

WIN in Bendigo also sponsor a number of community events and, without their support, it is unlikely that these events would occur. They range from everything from the Bendigo International Madison to the Elmore field days, the Bendigo football club, the Bendigo Inventor Awards, Bendigo community health fundraisers and charities. There are hundreds of events every year that the Bendigo WIN team support. Without them in Bendigo, these local groups and communities would miss out. So the role of our regional broadcasters is very important, not just for the local content that they deliver but for the way in which they support our local communities.

To that I would also like to add the importance of our local ABC. This is another broadcaster that is important to regional Australia. It is disappointing, however, to stand here and say that, because of federal government funding cuts, the ABC has announced that it will not be broadcasting the WNBL next season. This will end a 35-year partnership between the WNBL and the ABC. The ABC has been a leader in broadcasting women's sport and has played a significant role in boosting the development of women's sport in Australia. So it is disappointing after a 35-year partnership that this decision has been made. I believe that any decision to cancel the television broadcast of women's sport will have a detrimental effect on the participation in the sport, which will reduce the pool of talent available within Australia. That is because, without broadcasting, sponsorship dollars will dry up.

I met with Basketball Australia only last week. They said to me that the entire Opals team is underpinned by a strong and competitive WNBL. I know that I am joined by many in this House in support of the WNBL, including the member for Herbert. Unfortunately, my team, the Bendigo Spirit, went down to the Townsville Fire last weekend, but I am sure that we will rally this weekend and beat Sydney University and go on to win the grand final three times in a row. So these two regional centres are actively involved in their sport, but without broadcasting, without the televising of these games, fans would not be able to see their teams when they travelled. For example, if Bendigo is successful this weekend and we do play Townsville in the grand final, it will be the last broadcast match that Bendigo Spirit fans will see, unless the government acts to restore funding to the ABC so that they can continue the broadcasting next year.

Those are just two examples of how important broadcasting is in the regions and how we need to see infrastructure dollars flow. Like I said, those infrastructure dollars are not part of this bill. This bill does not actually save much money for the industry. This bill does not go to the core of the infrastructure issues that the member for Page highlighted in his contribution.

This 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. As we know, this bill also removes requirement for reports made to ACMA under the New Eligible Drama Expenditure Scheme to be independently audited.

A number of the amendments made in this bill are uncontroversial. The ones that are controversial, however, relate to captioning. This bill has made an array of changes. For example, the bill 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. This bill also removes the requirement for a statutory review of captioning obligations. The moment that this came out, like many of my colleagues, I was contacted by people in the community that had concerns, particularly those from within the deaf community. It turns out that the minister's original assurances that key groups had been consulted were not accurate. The deaf community certainly did not feel that they had been consulted on these reforms.

A bipartisan report of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee on this bill was very critical of the lack of consultation with the deaf community:

The committee notes that a large number of submitters indicated that that the consultation processes in relation to the bill had been inadequate. The committee agrees that the breadth of consultation in relation to this bill has been insufficient.

This is a Senate committee reporting on the lack of consultation, which is such a common problem for this government. It is disappointing that the Minister for Communications has failed to communicate on this very important issue with a number of people in the community affected by this bill. The lack of consultation reflects poorly on the Minister for Communications. It is his responsibility to make sure that all affected stakeholders are engaged. Don't worry, Minister, Labor has done it. Labor has consulted and, through this work, has come up with a compromise that ensures that the concerns of the deaf community are being taken into account.

I will finish by referring to the comments made by the member for Page towards the end of his contribution, which I think were in bad taste. I believe his words were: 'Why are we worried about captions for a few people when people in my electorate do not have pictures on the screen?' That completely misses the point that the deaf community was trying to make. Yes, there is an issue with infrastructure and, yes, we need to see government working in partnership with our regional broadcasters to make sure that regional communities have pictures on their screens. But it is an entirely separate issue when this bill seeks to disengage an element of our community by changing the reporting of captioning obligations for people within the deaf community. It is just disappointing that a flippant remark was thrown into this debate, which I think waters down and dismisses the very serious concerns that have been raised by people within the deaf community.

It should be noted that the changes before us will not solve the infrastructure problems. The money the industry will save as a result of this bill, about $350,000, would probably not even fund the construction of one new broadcasting tower—not even one. That is the problem with this bill. It is a lame attempt to demonstrate that government is getting on with doing something for broadcasting. This bill is another example of a government desperate to put forward a program, desperate to say that it is repealing red tape, when all it has done is what good government does every day—not yesterday, not tomorrow but everyday—that is, to update their acts to ensure that they are consistent with the times. Local content and regional broadcasting are important issues. I call on the government to come up with a decent plan for regional broadcasting to ensure that we continue to have good regional content.

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