Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was very honoured to participate in this House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts inquiry into community broadcasting. This Community television: options for digital broadcasting report is a significant piece of work. In 2005 an inquiry into the take-up of digital TV was undertaken by this same committee. During that inquiry the committee learnt of the plight, quite frankly, that community television was in at that stage and how it would be impacted by the digitisation of free-to-air television transmission.

In 2006 an inquiry was launched by this committee into community broadcasting issues. It was decided during that inquiry that a report be produced by the committee that addressed the issues confronting community television in respect of the use of spectrum and the impact on their businesses. The recent announcement by the government concerning the proposed use of previously unused digital channels has concerned the community television sector about the options they will have as they move into digital transmission. This committee attempted to drill into that with a view to establishing the most realistic options that could be reasonably expected by government for community television. The government has on a number of occasions announced its commitment to community television.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Just before the sitting was suspended I was indicating that the government has for some time stated that it had an ongoing commitment to community television. As a matter of fact, former Senator Alston, in his second reading speech on the Television Broadcasting Services (Digital Conversion) Bill 1998, indicated:

The government will also continue to support community broadcasters and will facilitate the transmission of community television broadcast services, free of charge, in ... datacasting services.

With time, and also with the government’s production in March 2006 of the digital action plan, time is now rapidly running out for the digitising of broadcast services for community television. During the inquiry the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia indicated that, without making provision for community television here and now, the financial viability of ensuring digitised access for community television will be threatened. Therefore, it should be a matter of some priority for the government.

At this stage community television is only broadcasting by way of analog signal, even though 23 per cent of Australian households currently have already converted to digital transmission. According to the Community Broadcasting Association, there are now in the vicinity of 40,000 set-top boxes being sold per month, which is further enhancing people’s move to digitisation. It is community television’s on-air time which allows it to attract sponsorship. Therefore, if it is, in effect, losing its audience reach during this simulcast period while commercial television has already been transmitting, and the audience is moving to digital television, it is fair to conclude that community television will increasingly be missing out on its audience share.

That is why it is so crucial for this committee to look specifically at the issues facing community broadcasters. As I say, there is a need to keep them viable so that they can keep fulfilling a need within society, and to be able to do so on the basis that they are not commercial stations and do not have the ability to fairly make the same adjustment that commercial television can make.

A set of recommendations is made in this report. The committee is very much of the opinion that simply to maintain access for community television to a reserve channel of a licensee might be appropriate for the purpose of simulcast. Unless community TV has the same ability as free-to-air commercials—that is, the ability to simulcast—they will continue to lose their share of audience. That is why the committee took the view that the government’s digital action plan, which suggests that a long-term commercial arrangement should be entered into with the purchaser of the reserve licence, would be detrimental to the long-term future of community television. The committee was very strong in this view and recommended that the Australian government sell the unreserved channel which is now known as channel A, with an obligation on the new licensee to carry commercial television during the simulcast period. Such carriage should be at no cost to the community TV sector during the period of that simulcast period.

Any significant delays that will occur in the sale of that channel A would again amount to a loss of audience and therefore revenue for the community TV sector. The committee therefore recommends that a sale of licence A should be completed by no later than 1 January 2008; otherwise, penalties should apply to the new licensee in their ability to carry community TV.

However, in the event that the government is not able to sell licence A and therefore not able to accommodate the community TV sector in terms of broadcasting, the committee is of the view that a temporary arrangement should be made for the use of that spectrum within the licence A to be carried by a national broadcaster for the specific purpose of broadcasting community TV only during the period of simulcast. This is an attempt by the committee to make sure that community television has a future in this country and it is to ensure that they can participate and properly be able to join digital transmission without losing audience share. I would suggest that this is in everybody’s interest. It certainly accommodates what the government has, since 1998, been saying it is committed to.

I say in concluding that this is a unanimous report by the committee. It has taken the committee into various aspects of community television. It is one which genuinely recognises the need for and future of community television in this country. I commend the chair, the member for Lindsay, and the committee. The staff of the committee I think have put together a report which truly reflects a bipartisan position in this matter.

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the mover of the original motion, I seek leave to speak without closing the debate.

Leave granted.

I thank the member for Werriwa for his support in the preparation of the Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts report Community television: options for digital broadcasting and for his keen interest and contributions throughout the taking of evidence. I note that the member for Parramatta is speaking after me. Similarly, she has been a great contributor to and attendee of the meetings that we have had to take evidence and to prepare the draft of this report.

The terms of reference given to the Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts were to investigate and report on:

The scope and role of Australian community broadcasting across radio, television, the internet and other broadcasting technologies;

Content and programming requirements that reflect the character of Australia and its cultural diversity;

Technological opportunities, including digital, to expand community broadcasting networks; and

Opportunities and threats to achieving a diverse and robust network of community broadcasters.

In those terms of reference the minister recognised that it was in Australia’s interests to have a diverse and robust network of community broadcasters. In the last 12 months of taking evidence it became clear that community television really needed spectrum to jump to in the transition to digital and this has not been clarified. Over the course of our inquiry it became apparent that various avenues were being lost to them as the ABC and SBS started multichannelling and fully utilised the available spectrum. The commercial sectors obviously had theirs full with simulcast, and the pay TV channels were full and expensive; they were very expensive for community players to access. The community channel on pay TV was different from community TV as we know it on the free to air.

When the government announced that channel A was to be sold by the end of 2007, the committee decided that it would be helpful to the minister if we delivered our findings on the community television sector early in 2007 for consideration in the sale process. Hence this report is being presented now. We have reserved a subsequent report which will cover community television governance, sponsorship, fundraising activities and all the other things that impact on this very important sector. We will deliver that report later in the year. We will also deal with radio and the other matters contained in the terms of reference. It was felt important that we get this report out early so that the minister could take notice of our deliberations in organising the transition of community television to the digital age.

The industry was launched in the late 1980s, when there were just test broadcasts, and then there was the launch of Channel 31 in Melbourne about nine years ago. It was set up from a university base and seemed to have the right governance structure in place that allowed the station to really launch. It has seen a number of innovative programs. At our inspection of Channel 31 in Melbourne, a most interesting point for me was that one of its most popular programs was a program for the over 65s. It is something you would not find a commercial network running for an hour on commercial TV, but it is something that is very important to our elderly population, who are increasingly isolated in their homes. People on a pension can find their financial wherewithal leaves them feeling isolated when they leave work. They cannot afford gym fees and they cannot afford to take part in many of the social activities that they did to stay fit. For retirees who live in unit dwellings and city areas, being able to undertake moderate exercise in their own home for an hour a day in front of the TV is something that they would much appreciate. This type of innovative, experimental program—putting something to air and saying, ‘Look what is out there,’ and watching it grow—is something that happens in the community sector. It is something that used to happen with SBS and ABC, but more and more we find the ABC is not interested in being the nursery for industry talent for the commercials. The ABC has a different operational approach. More and more we are seeing the commercial sector and the ABC and SBS raiding the community television sector for ready-trained talent, be it behind camera, within production or in front of camera.

This report, as I mentioned earlier, comes at a critical time when the decisions are being made about spectrum allocation. You see the commercial broadcasters really expanding their services and exploring all the possibilities of digital transmission. I think it is important that we allow community television the same opportunities—hence the recommendation to allow a full channel to the sector. That does not mean the current incumbents get the full channel, but it does enable a case to be made. If they say they want to put out an electronic program guide or if other players want to come into the market with different services and innovation, they should not be precluded in any future division of spectrum, so that, in future, community television will have the same proportion of spectrum use as the commercials.

I think government should be looking at the return of spectrum from the commercial players, and from the ABC and SBS, before it looks at the return of spectrum from the community sector. That was one of the key drivers behind why the committee felt it was important at this time to recommend that the full seven-megahertz channel be reserved for community use—not just for incumbents’ use but for community use.

We have seen a number of innovations in community broadcasts—not just on the internet with YouTube but all sorts of innovations. In fact, recently I have even seen politicians advertising themselves on YouTube; for instance, I have seen that Peter Debnam, the opposition leader in New South Wales, is reaching out on YouTube—a bit like the Blue Wiggle! But when you get politicians moving to community broadcasts to send a message across, clearly those broadcasts have a listenership and an audience and their needs are worthy of a government response.

Likewise, I think you will see this type of growth in community TV. It is absolutely a given—they call it ‘Gates’ law’—that the cost of this technology will be halved while the capability is doubled every six months. So the time is not far away when we will be able to produce television shows in our living rooms, and the opportunities for uploading them—

Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Gash interjecting

Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Jo! The member for Gilmore is having a chuckle with me over the thought that we could be putting our own ads to air—producing television ads here in Parliament House and uploading them on a number of different platforms! And heaven knows—if they are of good enough quality they might get to air on a community television station.

That is clearly an interest that people have. They no longer want to be the passive recipients of what the production networks think they want. More and more we see the commercials going to talkback and to instant feedback over the digital network and drafting and scripting their programs to run along the lines of, ‘What do the viewers we have captured want to see and who do they currently want to hear from?’ It is a small step from that to saying, ‘Here, I have produced this; put it to air.’

There is exciting new growth—major growth. And if the growth in the last decade in the community television sector is repeated in the next decade, someone standing here in this Main Committee giving a similar report 10 years from now will be saying some remarkable things about the sector. I predict that the growth will probably be twice what it has been in the last decade. I commend the report to the House.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the report by the Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts titled Community television: options for digital broadcasting and, like the member for Werriwa and the member for Lindsay, I am extremely proud to do so for the following reasons. Firstly, the community broadcasting sector is one I had quite a bit to do with in my pre-parliament professional life and is one that I have become quite fond of; secondly, I share its belief that providing communities the opportunities to share information with each other, to share stories and to develop views at a grassroots level through the media, is an essential service which must run in parallel with commercial broadcasters as part of our long-term media landscape; and, thirdly, this report, which is extremely well-thought-through and generous, is about a sector of our nation that has worked tirelessly for 30 or 40 years to build the strong community broadcasting sector that we all enjoy today.

I would like to express my thanks to the other members of the committee—particularly the chair, the member for Lindsay, Jackie Kelly—for the work they have done in preparing this unanimous report. We argued, we even fought at times and in the final result I think we made recommendations that go further than the government has made in the last few years. I would like to thank my fellow committee members for being prepared to move so far. I would also like to thank the secretariat. We are blessed in this House by having access to some of the most fabulous staff you can have, people who are absolutely committed to being fair and bipartisan. You can see in the work that they did through this process how much they came to care for the community and the issues they were dealing with, yet in front of us is an incredibly balanced and well-written report. It really is an extraordinary job and we should thank them fully for the incredible quality of their work.

The plight of the community television sector in gaining access to digital spectrum is now pretty dire. The Standing Committee on Communications, Information Technology and the Arts believes that urgent action is required. This became clear to the committee through its two most recent inquiries: the 2005 inquiry into the uptake of digital television in Australia and the inquiry into community broadcasting which commenced in January 2006 and is ongoing. Because of the urgency, we are delivering the special report specifically into community television and the conversion to digital; the full report into community broadcasting will be delivered later this year.

The urgency is caused by the transition from analog television broadcasting to digital. The transition period has been going for about 10 years now and is still underway. For much of the last few years, the commercial sector and national broadcasters have been simulcasting in analog and digital, so that as members of the community buy a set-top box or a digital television, they can still get commercial television and national broadcasters and they get an improvement in the quality of the broadcast.

The community television sector however does not have enough spectrum to simulcast. It broadcasts still in analog. So as members of its audience in their homes convert to digital, they no longer have easy access to the community television channel. They could if they knew their way around the technology, put the pieces together and run a few cables on their remote so that they could switch when they wanted to. But the reality is that most people do not know enough about that and when people switch to digital they effectively lose access to community television. That means, as 20 per cent of the population has now switched, 20 per cent of the population no longer has access to digital. As that percentage increases through this transition period, community television effectively is getting locked out of the market and the rest of the television sector is gaining that digital audience share.

There has been a suggestion in the past that community television could cope with a cold switch, that on the day that analog was switched off, it could then convert to digital on the same spectrum that it has now. What that effectively would mean is that community television would see its audience dwindle to less than 15 per cent of the market and then have to start literally from scratch in the digital world. Without any doubt, this would mean the death of community television. It is a sector restrained by its licence in the ways it can earn revenue. It survives on imagination, hard work and small revenue streams. It simply could not sustain the complete loss of its market over 10 years and then start again from scratch.

We are talking about a significant sector. A lot of people do not realise exactly how big it is. We really do not know exactly how big it is across the whole country. There are four full-time CTV licences—Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne—with trial services in Adelaide, Lismore and Mount Gambier. Channel 31 in Melbourne alone has 40 affiliated member groups which represent a variety of communities. That one channel in Melbourne has 1.3 million viewers tuning in every month—in Melbourne alone. That is bigger than some of the more well-known cable channels. This extraordinary television sector has done incredibly well under some very difficult circumstances.

The sector is also responsible for a large part of the training for the commercial sector. The commercial sector openly acknowledges that, as training within television stations and the national broadcasters has reduced, it is picking up more and more of its technical and on-air talent out of the community sector. We all know of the more famous one—Rove McManus, who came out of Channel 31 in Melbourne.

It is important that we get the recommendations right for this sector. It is extremely urgent because the options have been shrinking as more and more of the spectrum has been allocated to other uses. It became clear late last year that licence A, which is being auctioned off this year, is the last remaining real option for community television to be able to simulcast in digital. If that last piece of remaining spectrum is sold without providing access for community television, community television will be locked into analog and analog alone until the spectrum is freed up again at switch-off. So it became urgent for us to make a recommendation that community television get access to digital spectrum, and that is what we have done.

The committee has made five recommendations. The first one is that the Australian government sell the unreserved channel known as licence A with an obligation to be placed on the new licensee to carry community television during the simulcast period. This means that, once that licence is up and running, community television will be able to simulcast on their existing Channel 31 in analog and on licence A in digital. We have introduced some penalties should the carrier not meet its obligations. We have also introduced conditions that recognise how urgent this is. If licence A does not sell before the end of 2007 with a ‘must carry’ then sufficient spectrum will be temporarily allocated to one of the national broadcasters on a ‘must carry’ provision and the national broadcaster will be compensated for the additional costs. Both of those recommendations are necessary, again because of the urgency. In May last year community television were openly saying that they thought they may survive another year. That year is almost up. They really are in desperate need of our assistance.

We also recommended that, on the date of switch-off, the existing spectrum known as Channel 31—all seven megahertz of it—become available to community television. That will allow community television to expand in the digital world. The original government commitment made back in 1988 and then again in 2001 and 2004—in fact, over nine years—was to provide one channel. We have gone further than that and suggested that community broadcasting in all its forms—and we do not know what it will look like yet in the new world—be given the same opportunity to explore, grow and innovate that the commercial and national broadcasters have been given, and that is seven megahertz. We have also suggested some funding. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Mrs Gash) adjourned.