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

I'm pleased to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Prominence and Anti-siphoning) Bill 2023. As the name suggests, the government's bill deals with two quite distinct issues: prominence and anti-siphoning. The issue of prominence formed a part of the work of the coalition government's Future of Broadcasting Working Group. The working group had established prominence as a priority area, so it was appropriate that the government continued work in this area and has brought forward its model for reform in this legislation. As outlined in the explanatory memorandum for the legislation, the bill would insert part 9E into the Broadcasting Services Act, and this part would be focused on introducing a prominence regime.

The term 'prominence' refers to the accessibility of free-to-air television content on smart TVs, sometimes called 'internet-connected TVs'. The bill creates a new category of regulated television devices that would be required to carry free-to-air content as part of the prominence regime. This means that regulated devices would have to include the apps of free-to-air broadcasters and what the legislation describes as their 'primary user interface'—which, in practice, means the home screen of those devices. The legislation does not require that the free-to-air apps are positioned first on the screen; rather, it requires that they appear somewhere on the screen. The explanatory memorandum notes that manufacturers of regulated devices could still pursue commercial deals related to the order of particular apps on their home screens. Last month the government released additional regulations which prescribe the prominence requirements at a greater level of detail.

To turn to the anti-siphoning section of the bill, the anti-siphoning system was introduced in 1992. Its objective is to ensure that major sporting events can be viewed by Australians on free-to-air TV. The policy has been supported by successive governments over an extended period and has played an important role in ensuring that Australians are able to watch key sporting events at no cost. Sports covered under the anti-siphoning system include: the Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games, horseracing, AFL, NRL, Rugby Union, cricket, soccer, tennis, netball and several motor sports, including the Formula 1, cycling races and the Bathurst 1000.

Under the current scheme, subscription television broadcasting licensees are prevented from acquiring a right to televise an event specified on the anti-siphoning list until a free-to-air broadcaster has acquired a right to televise that event. If an event has not been acquired by a free-to-air broadcaster six months before it takes place, it comes off the list. Currently, the anti-siphoning rules apply to only subscription television licensees—and this term refers to entities that broadcast content that is regulated as a subscription television business. This is a relatively narrow category of content providers and does not include streaming services. The main change in the government's legislation is to extend the operation of the scheme to content providers other than subscription television licensees. This would mean that other entities, such as streaming content providers, would also be bound by the rules and could not acquire an event on the anti-siphoning list until a free-to-air broadcaster has acquired a right to that event. The government's rationale for this is that, in the absence of this change, content providers other than subscription television licensees could potentially subvert the intention of the scheme.

The bill also extends the six-month rule to 12 months. The argument for this is that rights to events are typically acquired more than 12 months in advance, meaning that if no free-to-air broadcaster buys the rights there is still time for another content provider to do so.

The coalition will not oppose this bill. I note the bill is still the subject of an inquiry by the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. We look forward to examining that report and will carefully review any recommendations that are proposed.

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