Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise also to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional Broadcasting Continuity) Bill 2024. I do it with a heavy heart. It's the diminishing of regional TV. It's the diminishing of regional choices. And it's another indication that, when it comes to regional Australia, this Labor government just doesn't get it, whether it be WA sheep farmers, irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin or people who live in regional cities who want infrastructure. You can't have a government that just focuses on cities and doesn't care about regions, and, unfortunately, that's what we've got. This isn't a huge example of that but it is an example of that, and it's really disappointing.

I want to support the member for Mallee, who just spoke, and her community in Mildura and surrounds. The loss of any free-to-air broadcasting in a regional area is a poor outcome for the industry, for viewers and for choice. Mildura Digital Television, which carried the Channel Ten signal to 70,000 viewers in Mildura, stopped transmitting on 30 June. MDT, jointly operated by WIN and the Seven network, first went to air in January 2006, but it has run at a loss and the decision was made to wind it up. Without any federal assistance to keep it going, the licence has been handed in. Viewers in Mildura now have to use the 10Play streaming app to watch the shows they previously watched free-to-air—and that's if they have the technology, the know-how and internet bandwidth to stream. Not everyone has that, particularly in regional areas. This bill is a response to the situation in Mildura, but it isn't the long-term solution we need and it isn't the long-term solution to the challenges faced by regional broadcasters.

What does this bill do? It amends the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and the Radio Communications Act 1992 to support continued access to television broadcasting services in regional Australia by permitting viewers to access government funded viewer-access satellite television—VAST—or the VAST safety net when a commercial television broadcaster ceases to provide terrestrial services in a given area. That's the case in Mildura, where the Seven and Nine signals will continue to be broadcast but Channel Ten and its secondary channels will no longer be broadcast.

What is VAST? Viewer access satellite television fills gaps in regional Australia where there is no reception or there is very poor reception. Anyone wishing to access VAST needs to purchase a VAST approved satellite set-top box and a satellite dish of at least 65cm diameter. The cost is from around $500 for a dish-and-receiver bundle, plus installation. It's a popular service for many grey nomads, but the portable systems with automatic tracking can cost many thousands of dollars. While creating access to VAST in the Mildura scenario means that viewers can continue to receive terrestrial broadcasts for all channels, they face additional imposts in costs and technological challenges. Therefore, they aren't receiving equality of access with other people in Australia—for example, people who live in cities or even in regional cities. Some might argue it's a cost of living in rural and remote parts of Australia. But Mildura is a regional city on the Victorian-New South Wales border; it's a significant city and I think its people deserve the same sort of access, the equality of access, to terrestrial broadcast television that other Australians have.

The reason for this impost on viewers isn't remoteness or reception, it's a partial failure of the aggregated regional TV market. Continuing to broadcast at a loss was uneconomic for the broadcast licence holder—hopefully, this is a one-off. But, as a parliament, we just can't afford to hope it doesn't happen again to another regional community. It has happened to the member for Mallee. I'm her next-door neighbour in Nicholls, and I have some regional areas that might suffer from this in the future. Or it could spread to Indi. All of us in regional areas suffer consistently from this inequality and the perception that the government somehow thinks we don't count as much as people who live in cities. Thanks to this bill, the Mildura example now has a name: it's a declared 'service deficient area'. Decoded, that means some of the channels which viewers should ordinarily receive free-to-air will no longer be available for them. I think we should seek to avoid this situation.

The way to do that, the long-term solution, is to make regional broadcasting viable. This bill removes impediments to commercial television broadcasters consolidating their terrestrial transmission arrangements and, in certain circumstances, breaking the one-on-one relationship between broadcasting and transmitter licences. This will allow broadcasters to pursue more efficient and cost-effective transmission arrangements. The industry view is that these are tweaks rather than real reform.

Free TV, which represents regional television broadcasters, has called for a comprehensive four-step plan to put regional television broadcasting on a sustainable long-term footing. What is at stake here is access to services, particularly trusted local news; local advertising opportunities; and access to major sports and cultural broadcasts. That's so important because traditionally in Australia we have come together around sporting and cultural broadcasts—all sorts of sporting broadcasts, such as the Melbourne Cup, the Olympics and the AFL grand final. Some of those, obviously, are on channels that will still be broadcasting terrestrially in Mildura, but Channel 10 had some of those too. So there is an issue with access to sporting broadcasts into the future. Abolishing the spectrum tax is one of the suggested measures to reduce costs for regional broadcasters, and it's a cost-saving measure that the coalition supports.

We have lost so much of what we had in regional television, and I think we need to protect what we have left. Three years after television had launched in metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne, the first regional station started broadcasting. The first to launch was TVT6 in Hobart in May 1960 and then GLV10 in Traralgon in December 1961. That's so long ago that my friend the member for Gippsland wasn't even born—wasn't even watching.

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