Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I join Senator Cameron in taking note of this report and of the inquiry that was undertaken. I of course join Senator Cameron in thanking the many participants to this inquiry and acknowledging the important subject matter that the Joint Select Committee on Broadcasting Legislation has considered as part of the report that has just been tabled.

I would note that this was one of the more unusual Senate committee processes that I have been a part of in my six years in this place. It was unusual not because of the conduct of the inquiry by Senator Cameron or his predecessor as chair Senator Thistlethwaite but because it was a committee established by the government's mandate in a great hurry as part of a government attempt to undertake sweeping review reforms and yet also push off to the sideline a few issues that the minister had put in his too-hard basket.

It is easy, given all of the chaos that we see from this government on a regular basis, to forget the chaos of a few months go that was of course Senator Conroy's ill-fated attempt at media reform. It is easy to cast that to the back of your mind as you contemplate the chaos that envelops the government today. Many will recall when prompted that Senator Conroy attempted to ram through this parliament in the space of one week some of the most sweeping media reforms the nation has ever seen.

Senator Conroy apparently failed to consult most of his cabinet colleagues and caucus and, in doing so, created a diabolical situation for the government, where it was pitched against most of the nation's media outlets, who were aghast at the proposed reforms that were about to be laid upon them, the heavy handed nature of those reforms and the threat to free speech that was inherent in Senator Conroy's approach. Having cast aside all proper process et cetera, he demanded sweeping legislative reforms to establish a new public interest advocate who would have sweeping powers over regulation of newspapers and regulation of media ownership, and he demanded that these substantial measures should be dealt with by the parliament in the space of one week.

The inquiry into that legislation—several bills, as I recall, with many pages of new legislation and substantial changes—had barely a day or two to report, assess, consider, hear from witnesses, take submissions and all of the usual things. There were several days, at most, for consideration of the same package of bills by both houses of parliament before Senator Conroy's self-appointed deadline to have those sweeping reforms enacted by the parliament.

In contrast, there were a couple of issues that Senator Conroy parked in his too-hard basket. So, rather than dealing with those that he found too hard—which had been, in some instances, considered and assessed by the convergence review—he established a joint select committee. This joint select committee is, of course, the one that reports today and concludes its work. It had several months to undertake its work. It had several months to consider and assess the specific proposals before it, compared to what Senator Conroy was trying to do with the sweeping changes he wanted to ram through the parliament in the space of just a week.

The oddity of the process comes from the fact that the only public hearings this joint select committee undertook were held in the same week as the great media reform debate—essentially in conjunction with, simultaneous to, or just after, the hearings of the legislation committee of the Senate, which looked at the broad issue of reforms. Why was it done in that nature and in that time frame? Because Senator Conroy, despite giving the committee many months to report, hoped to have this committee report on at least on some of these issues in the space of days, to have them bolted onto his ultimately ill-fated media reforms.

Thankfully, Senator Thistlethwaite, and later Senator Cameron, rejected those approaches of Senator Conroy. They rejected his desire to get a blank cheque, in a sense, to go forward with even wider media reforms, and at least let this process run its course and allowed proper deliberations of the committee. I pay tribute to Senator Cameron for his work in the committee in trying to come up with a sensible resolution and recommendation when it came to the reach rule, which was the most contentious part of the committee's deliberations.

The coalition has made a number of comments in addition to the report, but I would say that in principle the broad thrust of Senator Cameron's recommendations—and the committee's recommendations—in relation to the reach rule are consistent with the coalition's position. And I think they are accepted across the parliament. The reach rule is a rule that limits how much television market any one television broadcaster can own rights to access. It applies a 75 per cent cap in place, which means that no one television broadcaster could have licences to broadcast across all areas of Australia. You can only access some 75 per cent of the populace.

This rule, in many ways, was designed to try to ensure that we had a commitment to local or regional content. However, it really is an anachronistic rule. Regulating ownership and placing restrictions on ownership does not provide a guarantee of local production or local content. What is important is that we have the right legislative safeguards in place for local production and local content, instead.

The committee has found that considering abolishing the reach rule—as was referred to the committee—is putting the cart before the horse. What we should be doing, if either side of this parliament contemplates, in government, abolishing the reach rule, is, first and foremost, assessing what we expect regional content to be, and ensuring we have appropriate regional content legislated, regulated and in place.

I acknowledge, as Senator Cameron alluded to, the undertakings that Mr Gyngell suggested could be made as part of Nine's proposal for enhanced acquisition of broadcast reach, should the reach rule be abolished. That would be a step in the right direction, but it should really be the parliament, as the appropriate determinant of what the public interest is, that sets in place what level of regional production, regional content, local production and local content is appropriate. Then and only then could you get around to considering the abolition of the reach rule and opening up the ownership market. That is not going to be an easy process. The coalition acknowledges, in its additional comments to the report, that there would be many different views about what appropriate local content levels are. However, we think it should be done in the right order, not the wrong order, as Senator Conroy was contemplating.

Very briefly, I note one other recommendation of this committee, which relates to requiring or providing a legislative capacity for the ACMA to require on-air corrections. The coalition's view is that the case has not been made for such legislative change at present. There should be a persuasive case made before the parliament agrees to improve the powers of a regulator, and we believe that it is important in that context that there should be a fuller consideration of those issues, with appropriate arguments put for and against, rather than what was, in many ways, a side issue of this committee's deliberations when compared to the deliberations around the reach rule, which received far greater prominence.

With that, I commend the committee's work and, in particular, draw attention to the coalition's additional comments. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 18:30 to 19:30