Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like many Tasmanians, I was shocked last week to hear that WIN News will no longer broadcast live out of Tasmania. Indeed, our news bulletin is, apparently, to be broadcast out of Wollongong. We were shocked about this. My federal colleagues and I wrote to WIN asking them why they were making this decision that, we see, is not in the best interests of Tasmania. Tasmanians need local news, delivered locally by local journalists, that's relevant to Tasmanians. Tasmanians only have two commercial channels and the ABC from which to get their nightly news, and they want their news to be relevant to them. They want it to be about local issues that affect them and how national issues will affect them locally. What we do not need is the news to be broadcast to Tasmanians out of Wollongong.

As I said, my federal colleagues and I wrote to WIN to talk to them and to get some advice from them about this decision. WIN advised us that they're not going to remove any of the local journalists, which we were pleased to hear. We hope that's a long-term commitment, not just a short-term one to get them through this announcement period. But we are concerned that they continue to talk to people in WIN, in Tasmania, about how this will affect jobs in Tasmania going into the future. Local journalists often have a great start in regional areas and go on to do national profiles on national news, and we want to give Tasmanians and other journalists around the country the opportunities that they can get in Tasmania.