Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a real privilege to speak in support of the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Community Radio) Bill 2022 and in support of community radio. Community radio is super, super important right across this country. One in five Australians listens to community radio every week and two-thirds of community radio stations exist in rural and regional Australia. It is just such a vital part of our national cultural and communicative life, and that is one of the reasons why we're dealing with this bill now, in the first six months of this government. We have lots of big things to do. People in the community would have seen our focus on things like the National Anti-Corruption Commission and the bill to deliver secure jobs and better pay. Here we are before the end of our first year and we are going to do something about community radio because that's how important community radio is.

The bill does a number of things. It improves regulatory conditions, which will allow the sector to thrive. It works hand-in-hand with the fact that we're providing additional funding through the budget, an additional $4 million that lifts the annual contribution to more than $20 million. We have established a review to look at new ways to increase the sector's sustainability. All of those things are really important. They have been identified by the sector for some time. I know that Jo Curtin, the CEO of the Community Broadcasting Foundation, has said that the funding will have a really positive impact on sector sustainability and the media landscape. She said:

This funding will enhance the sustainability of our sector which serves as one of the only remaining local sources of news and information, particularly in regional and remote communities.

That really makes the point that it's not just the statistics that I mentioned before that make community radio so vital to the best form of community and cultural life in Australia. It is the diversity. It is the place- and community-specific programming. It is the focus on social inclusion and the way community radio is, probably as far as media outlets or platforms go, one of the most significant when it comes to covering First Nations stories and giving space to First Nations voices and First Nations languages.

The fact that we have prioritised this bill in the first six months of this government is consistent with another aspect of this government, which is picking up some of the mess that was left to it. It's good that the opposition is going to support this bill, but the opposition had the opportunity to deal with funding uncertainty in the sector when it was behind the wheel and it didn't do that. The sector called on the previous government on a number of occasions to provide certainty of funding, which didn't occur. The usual four-year funding round process was changed, with an extension of only two years until 2023. You can understand that, with the nature of community radio being volunteer based and often relatively financially fragile, when you go from four years worth of funding certainty to only two years of funding certainty it is a shock to the system. That's the decision that the former government made. Under the former government, funding was going to decline. It was due to drop to around $17 million over the forward estimates under its last budget. It's only the additional $4 million that this government is providing that will in fact see funding to community radio go up to $20 million.

I want to acknowledge the fantastic work of the Minister for Communications, because I know that over a long period of time she has been very conscious of community radio as a vital part of our media landscape. I think it says something about the minister and also about the government that while we look at some of the big building blocks of life and shared wellbeing in Australia we're not forgetting to pick up a whole bunch of the essential bits and pieces along the way. The Minister for Communications has a huge task to fix up the awful multitechnology NBN mess that's been left to households and businesses across Australia. She is focused on that, but at the same time she's going to make sure that we look after community radio ASAP. That's vital.

In my electorate of Freo, I can cite a couple of examples. Radio Fremantle was established back in 1987. It's 107.9 FM. It's still broadcasting from Hamilton Hill. It's still run by volunteers. It's a great example of a station that gives people across my community the opportunity to come and play the music that they are interested in and conduct interviews and current affairs programs around things that are relevant to people in Fremantle, Cockburn and East Fremantle. Similarly, SportFM, 91.3 FM, in Hamilton Hill covers grassroots sports that otherwise wouldn't be covered by bigger commercial outlets.

For me, personally, community radio has a very special status. It was one of the things that gave my dad the greatest joy in his life. He was involved in university radio back in the 1970s. In fact, when the University of Western Australia got a community radio licence in April 1977—6UWA, as it then was—my dad was part of a group of what I guess were probably music radicals at the time. They went to whoever was responsible at the university and asked them if they could please carve out a little bit of time, a few hours in the week, for what was called NCP, non-classical music programming, so they could play blues, jazz and other things they were interested in. 6UWA became 6UVS-FM, and ultimately, in 1991, it was restructured to be Arts Radio Ltd or RTRFM, and that continues to this day.

My dad was the inaugural chair of RTRFM when it was given that new foundation for existence. The program that he was involved in, Sunday Morning Coming Down, is still a feature of RTR programming, and some of the people that he used to broadcast with are still part of that programming. It's formed a lovely continuity, I think, in community life in Western Australia and certainly in my personal life. I've also been fortunate to participate in current affairs programs, like Understorey, which is run by Adrian Glamorgan. One of the things I want to note about that is that Adrian has made a big effort to give space in his programming to issues like peace and nuclear nonproliferation, which, frankly, should get talked about a hell of a lot more than they do.

This government is focused on myriad things. Some of them are big and momentous, but we are not turning our gaze from any of the shortcomings that were left to us by the former government. We're not turning our gaze from any of the key features of community and cultural life that desperately need a helping hand if we're to have a diverse media landscape—a media landscape full of all of the colours, flavours and voices that make Australia such a wonderful place—so I'm very glad to support what we're doing with respect to community radio.

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