David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Community Television) Bill 2024. It is about a very important issue, which is the allocation of spectrum for community television—in particular, community television in Melbourne, Geelong and Adelaide that is broadcast under channels 31 and 44. Community television is where a lot of people get their start in the television industry, and there is a lot of important content that appears on those channels broadcast under the use of spectrum. Spectrum refers to the use of the airwaves, be it for television or indeed for mobile services that are so popular around the country. This is about how the government manages that spectrum. It's a really important issue because we have seen the minister mismanage spectrum very badly in relation to round 6 of the Mobile Black Spot Program—that notorious round where the minister personally directed which project should get funding, and in Victoria and New South Wales 100 per cent of those locations were in Labor electorates. That's one hundred per cent of the locations for which the minister directed funding as part of her allocation of spectrum—which is very relevant to today's bill. That was a shocking misuse of taxpayers' funding. That is why the Auditor-General is looking into this and doing very thorough and diligent examination of the conduct of round 6 of the Mobile Black Spot Program. We look forward to his report, which is due by May.

Spectrum is really important, and this legislation would extend the deadlines for Australia's two remaining community television stations to remain on the air using radio frequency spectrum. It would scrap the legislated expiry date of 30 June 2024 and instead give the power to the Australian Communications Media Authority—ACMA—to set a new deadline. There would be a two-stage process which would effectively provide the community television stations with 12 months notice before they would move to delivery via an online platform. Under stage 1 of the proposed changes, ACMA would determine: first, the alternative use for the spectrum, and then there would be a six-month process for ACMA to formally determine this declared use. Under the second stage, once the determination had been made, it would be up to ACMA to set a date for when the licenses for the use of that spectrum would expire. The decision on that date would be via a disallowable legislative instrument.

There have been a number of extensions to the spectrum before—the most recent was in 2021. I would say that the government has taken a long time to address this issue—it has been almost two years since it was elected. It has been absorbed in other issues such as the Voice debate and other issues last year, and this could have been dealt with a lot earlier. But, given that deadline of expiration is almost upon us, the government is now acting. The coalition won't be standing in the way of passage of this bill and will support it. We would have liked to have seen the government deal with this issue more quickly and in a more competent fashion, but we will not oppose this legislation and will support its passage through the House.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.

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