Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As has been said, the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television Switch-over) Bill 2008 makes amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to enable the government to set a staggered, region-by-region digital switch-over timetable for the transition to digital-only television around Australia, with the final switch-over date being in 2013. It is important to note that the process of digital conversion in Australia has been a longer saga, as I have said elsewhere, than Blue Hills. The idea of switching to digital television has been around for a very long time. The process of actually getting there has been very slow indeed.

In fact, the first time I saw digital television was at an exhibition here in Parliament House in 1998 when the various television companies set up a display of digital TV in the Main Committee room. I must say that, although it was only a standard definition picture, I was very impressed by the clarity and the quality of the picture. But the people I spoke to at Channel 10 told me that standard definition was only part of the story; the real glory of digital television was in high-definition broadcasting. They said to me that it was a pity that I could not go to the International Broadcasting Convention being held in Amsterdam the weekend after that display, because that conference was devoted to digital television and would include high-definition digital television and multichannelling.

As it happened, I could go, because I was going to a conference in Trinidad and would be going through London that weekend. I diverted to Amsterdam and went to the International Broadcasting Convention, where I was stunned by what digital television had to offer. It was not just the quality of the picture—and the quality of the high-definition picture is, of course, quite amazing. More important, I felt, was the opportunity to multichannel. You could have several pictures of, say, a sporting event, looked at from different angles, and there were various other options which multichannelling offered. I thought that the great benefits that multichannelling offered were what we should be seeking to bring to Australia from digital television. It meant that you could, for example, have a channel devoted to children’s education. You could have channels devoted to other speciality interests. For example, there could be three ABC channels: one devoted to education, one devoted to children’s programs and then the ordinary ABC channel. This could also be done by the commercial channels. I returned to Australia highly enthusiastic about the possibilities that digital television offered. I spoke to then Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Richard Alston about what I saw as this exciting option. Later that year, he also went to Europe and also had a look at digital television.

But, as Senator Birmingham has said, the progress towards the switch-over date has been very slow indeed. There were various factors which came into play, as Senator Birmingham has said. Among them, of course, was that different commercial channels in Australia had views about the desirability or otherwise of converting to digital television. While we procrastinate, the delay will go on. Until Australians have been able to see the brilliance of digital television, which they can now, they will be unwilling to convert. The quickest conversion in the world was in the United Kingdom, where the satellite television channel there, BSkyB, gave every household a set-top box. Every household in the UK had a set-top box free of charge, and they were able to watch digital television on their analog set. Given that there are about seven million houses in Australia and set-top boxes cost about $50 these days, if the Australian commercial television broadcasters were of a mind to spend $35 million and present each household in Australia with a set-top box, I think Australia would move very quickly into the digital era. Although it has been a long, slow road, we are getting there. I welcome this legislation.

Some of the television channels were reluctant to switch to digital and multichannelling, believing, I suppose, that this would protect their market position. Channel Seven need to be respected because they wished to switch to digital and multichannelling much earlier than some of the other commercial channels have. It is very interesting that, while the commercial channels have lagged in agreeing to the digital switch over, subscription TV has gone ahead by leaps and bounds. Subscription TV not only is solely digital now but also offers about 130 channels. I believe Foxtel is now in about 30 per cent of the households in metropolitan Sydney. Equally, around the rest of the country people are showing that they like the option of digital television and multichannels. I am sure that is a message the commercials are picking up, because now they are moving towards a digital conversion.

I would like to make a special mention of regional television services needing special assistance to make the conversion to digital television. In Western Australia, for example, we have two satellite based commercial networks which, rather than just having one transmitter in one capital city as the capital city commercials do, have to have a transmitter in every town in Western Australia—and there are quite a lot of them. The cost of putting in the equipment to receive and transmit a digital signal in all those different locations is quite high, and that same consideration would apply to regional television services in other states around the country.

Both Senator Ludlam and Senator Birmingham have mentioned community television. I think it is very important that community television not be forgotten in this question of the digital conversion. Community television, unlike commercial television, is not well funded, but it does provide an important service to the community. In Western Australia, regrettably, Channel 31 in Perth, which was an excellent community television station, has folded. It found that being unable to transmit in digital meant that it continually lost viewers to the other, digital, channels in Western Australia, so it was not able to continue its broadcasts and the company has closed down. That really is a matter of regret, because Channel 31 Perth was probably the best community television service in Australia. For example, it trained young people in television technology so that they could go out and get employment in the commercial world of television. It did this under the Green Corps program, which seems to be a rather strange use of Green Corps, but nevertheless many young people in Perth received training in television technology at Channel 31, and I for one was very sorry that it had to wind up its operations.

In conclusion, I welcome this bill because, while it does not provide for a switch-over date in the near future—with a final switch-over date towards the end of 2013—at least there is now a definite switch-over date. When that occurs, the conversion-to-digital saga will still not be the longest saga in Australian commercial broadcasting history—that honour will still belong to Blue Hills!