Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

The Nick Xenophon Team supports the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Radio) Bill 2017. Radio plays an important role in connecting our communities, particularly our regional and remote communities. As a listener and a one-time amateur community radio announcer, I'm a keen supporter of this medium and appreciate how much digital radio has supplemented the FM and AM stations. Digital radio has been broadcasting in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide since 2009. Canberra and Darwin are about to receive permanent licences, and I understand Hobart is next on the list, but the rollout has been sloth-like in its slowness, and, really, it does show contempt for those of us who live outside the big metropolitan regions. Some of my electorate is in the Adelaide licence area, but most of it is not, and the listeners in Mayo would like that to change. Why should we wait eight years, as we have? This is another example of the digital divide that exists between city folk and those of us in rural and regional Australia.

To that end, I and my Nick Xenophon Team colleagues welcome this bill, which seeks to streamline the Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA's, regulatory regime to make it easier to plan and licence digital radio in regional Australia. These amendments have come about after consultation with the broadcasting industry and are drawn from recommendations in the 2015 Department of Communications Digital radio report. This is truly welcome reform. In a time of rapid technological change, we need to be flexible and help rather than hinder the private sector. However, I do realise that while ACMA's Digital Radio Planning Committee for Regional Australia has identified 39 markets to introduce digital radio, it will be a commercial decision made by the broadcasters themselves. My concern is, if large commercial enterprises find the decision difficult or they don't believe a region will be profitable enough for them, they won't apply for a licence. This could mean that regional areas, which are just as deserving of this technology, this form of communication, will be at the mercy of a CEO's decision based on potential profits and not on regional need, and there's the great likelihood that some areas will never receive digital radio.

This gap in services to community radio, I believe, comes into its own and leads me to raise the issue of the backlog in community radio licensing. I have five community radio stations in my electorate with long-term licences and three with temporary licences. TribeFM and 5 Triple Z share a temporary licence, and Hills Radio is on its fourth year of a temporary licence. These stations are not alone in their desire for a long-term licence. The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia says there are approximately 65 community radio stations across the country still waiting for a permanent licence. I understand approximately half a dozen licences were advertised recently by ACMA. This is the first group of licences to be advertised in many, many years. They are in areas that are fairly easy to regulate.

In my electorate and in the case of Hills Radio, the regulatory regime is more complicated. The Murray Bridge licensing area plan needs to be reviewed. The time line for this review has been significantly delayed. Bear in mind, Murray Bridge is 46 kilometres away from Mount Barker, a community very different to the Adelaide Hills. And the people of the Adelaide Hills rarely travel or work in the Murray Bridge area.

When I raised this issue with the communications minister, Senator Fifield, in 2016 on behalf of my constituents, I was promised that the review would be in 2017. I understand that it's been delayed again, and now will be the last quarter of this year at the very earliest. I understand that poor resourcing is exacerbating the processing time for ACMA. But this is just not acceptable. How can it be that government provide support to some—it's reported they provided $30 million to Rupert Murdoch and Foxtel—yet only crumbs are available for community radio? And don't get me started on the lack of government support for community television!

I raised this claim about the lack of resources in ACMA's community broadcasting unit in correspondence with the minister, but today I'm none the wiser and I still am yet to understand whether the minister truly supports community radio.

So, while I commend the government for streamlining the regulatory regime for digital radio, I urge them to investigate similar reforms and put in the same amount of effort when it relates to community radio licensing. With respect to digital radio, the government must ensure that there are supports in place so that those of us who live in regional areas don't miss out because of commercial decisions of CEOs. At the very least, government need to provide ACMA with the resources it needs to get the work done, because regional Australia is missing out. In the last budget, the government gave a two-year commitment of $3.9 million to community digital radio. I must say that was after a huge campaign by community radio stations, which I was very keen to support. But that money won't go far and it won't reduce the backlog of community radio stations and their licensing applications.

Community radio had a record number of listeners in 2017. More than 5.3 million Australians—one in four Australians—tuned in. There are more than 450 community radio stations across Australia, and 66 per cent of them are in regional and rural areas communicating with Indigenous communities, ethnic communities, young people, senior citizens. More than 70 per cent of the content on community radio is locally produced, and most of it by more than the 20,000 volunteers, who are passionate about this sector. They are elderly people who love radio and also young people who are really keen to get into this medium. Community radio provides more than 600 full-time equivalent jobs, and the sector trains more than 5,600 people every year, making it a training ground for our future journalists and broadcasters.

So, in closing, while I commend the government for its efforts to streamline community radio licensing arrangements, I call on the government to make sure they review the rollout when it's in regional areas to make sure that we don't miss out, simply because of commercial decisions. I also call on the government to give the same attention they give to digital radio and commercial enterprise to community radio.

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