Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will try to pick up where I left off. The coalition government had a rounded and comprehensive plan to support the transition to digital television. Many of my colleagues would remember that fantastic election commitment to establish a dedicated new children’s channel on ABC, with an emphasis on educational entertainment content for all ages from preschool through to late teens. That was about providing new content, a reason for people to make the conversion from analog to digital—a new opportunity, a new viewing experience. That is what brings about the kind of change that is needed to see this transition. That funding, an extra $82 million over four years, was a very important commitment for a new advertising-free channel.

You might also recall the channel A and channel B action. Those initiatives were designed to bring new narrowcast offerings into the marketplace to provide a platform for community television to transition to digital. The current government has decided to step back from that. No-one quite knows what that means. All we know is it is not stepping forward. No-one is really clear on whether channel A and channel B or the spectrum that it represents is still being considered for alternate uses to encourage conversion to digital. More worryingly, community television is wondering where its spectrum is. We have already seen Access 31 in Perth shut down as a result of the uncertainty. They were saying channel surfers in the west, in that great city of Perth, could not pick up Channel 31. They have no digital transmission capability. Their prospects of hooking their wagon along with other community channels to the channel A and channel B process have been lost by this step back by Senator Conroy and they are crying out for some clarity.

What we have before the parliament tonight is a better bill than went to the Senate. It embraces some of the recommendations from the review of the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts. One of the main areas they highlighted was an absolute lack of clarity about what an adequate level of take-up was before a switch-over from analog to digital took place. This is when the simulcast would stop, where the only way you could get your free-to-air television was through digital technologies and analog would just black out. Surely it is reasonable to want to know what those benchmarks are, to know how the government is going to achieve those benchmarks and to get some public clarity about whether they are getting nearer or not. Even if just a small percentage of people are not ready for the switch from analog, surely it is reasonable to want to know just how many tens of thousands of viewers will have no television at all. Surely whether there is a need to vary or to defer or to take other action to bring about a successful transition over to digital is something that is important enough to be publicly canvassed, to be evaluated against an objective set of criteria, to be reported on and to be reflected on. These are perfectly sensible recommendations.

What has happened, though, in the bravado and the bluster in the other place, is that Senator Conroy has completely rejected these recommendations on what I have described as the ‘WIJI’ basis. ‘Well, it just is,’ is his argument when there is a debate on content, on policy. However, we saw moments ago some amendments that the government are now going to move in the House. So horrible were these suggestions that they fought tooth and nail against them in the Senate. They rejected outright engaging with the coalition and other parties in the Senate, and now they have come in with some amendments of their own, which have just landed. Some of them mimic the ideas that the opposition had introduced into the Senate. We are having a look at them right now, but how remarkable to completely and flatly refuse them and to put forward what can only be described as more of Conroy’s counterfeit logic as to why these things should be rejected, only to bring something that is trying to look like those amendment into this parliament.

Despite what Senator Conroy claims, the coalition’s amendments do not in any way move to change or alter switch-over deadlines. Our amendments are designed to save Senator Conroy from himself. Senator Conroy has dreadful form when it comes to meeting his own deadlines. Look at the national broadband network debacle. What a disaster, what a shambolic process that is. And we learnt today that the cost of administering that process is twice what is in the appropriations bill. There is a doubling of the amount of money: another $10 million just to handle a process that was supposed to have selected a tenderer some months ago—and work was supposed to have started today. So the process now costs twice as much to administer without a hole being dug anywhere, This is a process where one of the lead tenderers, Telstra, say they cannot go within a bull’s roar of the tender specification and where, if someone else wins it, we are likely to have litigation at 20 feet for as long as you can imagine. That is an example of why we in the opposition need to help Senator Conroy, to save him from himself.

These amendments put in place evaluation criteria, an objective framework upon which a decision to turn analog televisions blank can be determined so that we know what the impact of that switch-off will be on viewers. I commend the bill to the House. I encourage it to embrace the bill as it was embraced by the Senate. I am amused and interested in the government’s—I was going to say eleventh hour; it is not quite there yet—last-minute change of heart. It was something it flatly refused, and now it has tried to come up with its own amendments that have some of the language and some of the ideas but leave out some of the critical things that we were aiming for. That has now been dropped in this parliament. We are having a look at that, but at least Senator Conroy has recognised a constructive, a pragmatic, a positive opposition adds value to his processes, because Senator Conroy and shambolic are two words that travel together. I commend the bill to the House.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Fancy having the other mob, the mob on that side, lecturing us on telecommunications and communications! Talk about waffle and bluster. I bring the House’s memory back to the pitiful record on telecommunications of those opposite. They were going to try to introduce, on the flimsiest of evidence, an out-of-date wireless broadband system that could never work. Under them, the concentration of media ownership in this country was probably second to none. They have an appalling record in that, and they have an appalling record of computers in schools and broadband generally. Then, of course, there is the appalling uptake—which is the reason we are talking about digital switch-over—of digital television in this country. So the member for Dunkley, whom I like a lot—he has a great deal of good swagger and bonhomie and a hell of a lot of bluster and a hell of a lot more waffle—talks about WIJI. Well, the word we are using—and you will be interested in this—is SWAGOnWI, not WIJI.

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This will be good!

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s right. ‘Stop the waffle and get on with it’—that is the basis of the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television Switch-over) Bill 2008. We have waited for those opposite to do something about this for ages. Nothing of substance was done. The rollout has been appalling, and you know it. The technical side of the rollout has been appalling, and unless you get on with it with a bit of whip and stick it is never going to happen. So, for all your bluster and all your amendments, nothing was going to change. This bill is crucial to ensuring that the changeover to digital television can be managed sensibly and effectively and ultimately provide a much superior television service to people across the country, both in the cities and in the rural areas.

The television industry is one that I have a long and quite sentimental attachment to, as my dad spent many years—indeed, his whole working life—as a television and radio technician. Indeed, we were blessed to have one of the first televisions in our street, and I remember that lots of neighbours used to come and sit with us as we watched the black-and-white test pattern, as some in this House might still remember.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed. Of course, my dad was part and parcel of the growth of television in Tasmania. So, whereas some people like to look at the birds, the bees and the trees when they go travelling, when I went travelling as a kid I used to—and I still do—look at antennae: where the TV antennae are pointing, what type they are, what type of reception they are picking up and so forth. I do not have my dad’s technical skill, but I have this interest when I go and visit people and doorknock—‘What’s your TV reception like?’—and I try and do a bit of tuning if it is at all possible.

I have also been part of a group which worked to improve the television reception in my home area of Forth through a self-help program which has greatly increased the standard of the television we view in my valley. Our valley village and surrounds have had to rely for many years now on a community translator, community established and owned, to receive TV. The member for Dunkley quite rightly talked about the black spots program, and I congratulate the former government on that program. I wish to see something very similar from this government, and no doubt many of you in regional areas will join with me in wanting to see that happen—all in good time, but let us start rolling out digital television.

The community translator was a result of a battle long fought and was a motivator for me to get elected to the Central Coast Council, my local council, in 1996—which, you will be pleased to know, eventually led me to this place. So there you go. I have had a lot to thank inadequate TV reception for, and I know this bill will go a long way to preventing others from getting into this place on the same grounds. We have had three versions—I say for your interest, Member for Dunkley—of our transmitter over a decade, and the current one was a result of community funding, council auspices and the federal TV black spot funding. Unfortunately—I have to share this with you—it was a case of one step forward and two steps backwards. When I finally got TV reception for my valley after four years—there was only one person left on the committee, and that was me—and after we finally got it turned on, I sat down and was relieved to watch the programs coming through fairly clearly, and I got a phone call from a neighbouring community that blamed me for ruining their reception, because it affected their district. So you cannot win, and I have never won that community ever since. However, I blame the former federal government for that.

Tasmania, of course, is scheduled to completely switch to digital by mid-2013, and it is incumbent on the commercial channels and public broadcasters to meet this deadline. Hence, we want to get on with it. However, there are a number of community translators in my electorate, such as my own and those in places like Circular Head, Sisters Beach, Gunns Plains, Eugenana and more, which are not the responsibility of the major providers across the country. They will need to be publicly supported to switch over. I have already raised this with the federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, several times, and I will be relying on the Minister for Finance and Deregulation, at the table, to ensure that there is adequate finance to bring this about.

It is in regional areas like mine that this bill could well have the most benefit, as it will allow the switch-over to better reflect geographic, infrastructure and consumer interests in the local market. It is not a simple matter of just throwing a switch and, presto, everyone is watching a digital signal. We know that is not the case. Achieving this aim will require careful cooperation among everyone involved, and I do not just mean the government and broadcasters. This must flow down through the regulators and providers of digital television to viewers and electrical and antenna retailers and installers. Everyone will need to play their part, and it would be naive to think that it will be achieved across the country in a short period of time.

My colleague Minister Conroy, so unfairly blackened in his reputation by the former speaker, has likened this changeover to the scale of the change to decimal currency in 1966, but this changeover will be even more difficult to manage because the system for delivery of currency was uniform across the country. You did not have to use a different type of note or coin in one area to what you had to use in another even though they might be only a few kilometres apart. You were also dealing, essentially, with one provider through the government and did not have to consider the vagaries of competition which exist in our television markets. So getting all these different factors and groups to work together for the digital television changeover will be a much more elaborate juggling act. But, contrary to the sentiments expressed by the member for Dunkley, cooperation and consultation have been a hallmark of this legislative process. I refer to the Bills Digest of 8 October 2008, because I do not wish to plagiarise. I will read it for the edification of the member for Dunkley. It says:

There appear to have been no recent concerns about this bill raised by relevant interest groups. This may be, as noted, because the measures continue a framework which already acknowledges that conversion to digital will require approaches that recognise the different needs of various regions. This may also be because the government—

As I said—

has sought to address any concerns through consultation with a non-statutory industry advisory group it has established to support its digital transition strategy. Amendments regarding the statutory reviews also only change timing, not their proposed purpose.

Just to reinforce this consultation and cooperation in the drawing up of this legislation, may I name some the organisations that were consulted and had their say in this legislation. There was ABC Television, SBS Television, the Nine Network, Network Ten, the Seven Network, Free TV Australia, the Regional Broadcasters Association, the Australian Community Television Alliance, the Australian Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers Association, the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association, the Consumer Electronics Suppliers Association, the Australian Retailers Association, Broadcast Australia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority—is there a tie missing tonight on one of the members?—and the National Community Titles Institute. Goodness gracious! What is happening to the dress standards of this House? There is a member opposite without a coat and tie!

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I’ll put a shoelace on!

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You do that. The main aim of this bill is to amend the act to allow a staggered regional digital switch-over to be finished by the end of 2013. At present, the current legislation includes a switch-over date of 31 December 2009 for metropolitan areas and two dates, 31 March and 31 December 2011, for regional areas depending on the licence involved. These switch-over dates—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Wait for it—you will get the rest of it, although I think we are going to be interrupted. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.