Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Macdonald, for that series of questions. I will be very brief, given where we are at in the schedule. On your principal question, which related to corporate restructure: it depends, of course, on what is a trigger event, and the intention is to ensure that a trigger event is not avoided. It is all tied up with the whole notion of a change of control. So, obviously, with restructures it will always depend on the circumstances, and I could not possibly answer every combination or permutation that might come up. That is why the regulator is there.

I did say yesterday, and I think it is very important that small licence holders know that, as I have said very clearly, I intend to look at the impact on smaller family-owned licensees as part of the ACMA review on local content. I did give a very long answer previously in relation to how the local news, weather and other announcements would operate.

It is very clear that there is no immediate obligation on anyone to do anything. We will, if these bills pass, be imposing a requirement, but it will be deferred until there can be a proper review to establish the right balance and proper benchmarks. That should give a level of comfort to anyone listening to this debate that we are interested in hearing about the impact of these requirements and how they might impact on a particular business case.

I anticipate that there will certainly be some small operators that may require to be exempted from some of the requirements. It is going to come back to the parliament because if this mandatory requirement is altered at all then it must be done by way of a ministerial direction, a disallowable instrument. I fully intend it to be reviewed in a transparent, accountable and very open way.