Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

BROADCASTING AND OTHER LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (DEREGULATION) BILL 2015

The Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 (the Bill) amends the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the Radiocommunications Act 1992 and the Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005 to remove unnecessary legislation and reduce the regulatory burden on the broadcasting industry.

The Australian Government is committed to reducing the regulatory burden for business and the community to boost productivity. In May 2014, the Minister for Communications and his Parliamentary Secretary released the Communications Portfolio: Deregulation Roadmap 2014. This outlined the deregulation agenda for the Communications Portfolio.

The Government recognises that the broadcasting and media sectors are heavily regulated. The Bill will therefore implement a number of broadcasting related measures identified in the Communications Deregulation Roadmap. It will also address issues that have been raised through consultation with industry.

The Bill will remove some of the onerous requirements placed on the free-to-air broadcasters and subscription television licensees, streamline and simplify broadcasting legislation, and save industry time and money.

Schedule 4 to the Broadcasting Services Actprovided the regulatory framework for the transition from analog to digital-only television broadcasting. The last terrestrial analog television services were switched off on 10 December 2013. After the completion of digital switchover in each licence area, the restack program commenced. The restack program involves the progressive reorganisation of television services across Australia. This is to ensure that none use digital dividend spectrum and that they are transmitted in a more spectrally efficient manner. The restack program is on schedule to be completed by 31 December 2014. Therefore, many of the licensing and planning provisions in broadcasting legislation that regulated the industry during the simulcast period are redundant, or, for the purposes of restack, are about to be. This Bill will remove or amend those provisions.

The Bill will also amend the framework for the planning of the broadcasting services bands spectrum by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). While many of these planning provisions were necessary when the ACMA first established its planning instruments, many are now considered onerous, given the other legislative requirements the ACMA is required to adhere to.

Reflecting stakeholder feedback the Communications Portfolio Deregulation Roadmap identified captioning reporting as an area for reform in 2014. These reforms will reduce costs associated with the captioning regime and substantially increase licensees' flexibility when meeting their captioning obligations. In so doing the reforms will better support the ability of free-to-air broadcasters and subscription television licensees' to provide captioning services that benefit Australians with a hearing impairment.

This Bill will remove annual reporting arrangements for free-to-air broadcasters in favour of a complaints based process. In recent years, captioning requirements on the free-to-air television sector have gradually increased to such an extent that it has become clear to consumers when services do not meet them. This allows a move to a complaints-based system in place of existing onerous annual reporting arrangements reducing compliance costs for free-to-air broadcasters.

The captioning requirements placed on subscription television licensees are considerably more complex than those applying to free-to-air television broadcasters. Subscription television licensees are required to provide differing levels on captioning over a 24 hour period on different channels, which means there is currently no easy way for consumers to accurately know whether a particular program is required to be captioned. A move to a full complaints-based system for subscription television licensees is not appropriate for these licensees at this time. To achieve a better outcome in the long term, the Department of Communications will conduct further consultation with industry to identify ways in which the subscription television captioning regime could be modified to best suit the needs of all stakeholders.

In the meantime, the Bill introduces a number of measures designed to enhance flexibility and reduce the regulatory burden on subscription television broadcasters. The amendments will also reduce record keeping requirements and provide greater flexibility for the ACMA when assessing whether subscription and free-to-air broadcasters are providing high quality captioning services. However, the measures in this Bill are not expected to reduce the overall level of captioning free-to-air broadcasters and subscription television licensees provide and will not affect legislated future increases in the levels of captioning.

The Bill will remove the requirement for reports made by certain subscription television licensees and channel providers to the ACMA under the New Eligible Drama Expenditure Scheme to be independently audited. This will remove a significant administrative and financial burden on subscription television licensees and channel providers who have demonstrated high levels of compliance with their obligations under the Scheme.

The Bill will make minor amendments to the media ownership and control provisions in the Broadcasting Services Act. This includes extending the timeframe in which contemporaneous changes in control must be notified to the ACMA and removing the requirement for certain broadcasting and datacasting licensees and newspaper publishers to provide an annual list of their directors to the ACMA. Such reporting is unnecessary as the ACMA can source the required information elsewhere.

The Bill will make changes to the way in which changes in population affect the regulation of broadcasters. It will do this by providing grandfathering relief for commercial broadcasting licensees that, through no fault of their own, would otherwise be placed in breach of the statutory control rules and local content rules for commercial radio if they maintained their existing operations. This measure will ensure a more consistent application of grandfathering arrangements to deal with any inadvertent consequences arising from changes in population.

The Bill will correct an anomaly in the way certain licence areas are treated with respect to the media ownership and control rules. This will make sure that the method used to calculate media diversity voices more accurately reflects the practical reality of commercial radio services available to residents in certain licence areas.

Finally, the Bill repeals section 123A which requires the ACMA to conduct periodic reviews to assess whether a number of provisions of the Broadcasting Services Act operate in accordance with prevailing community standards. The provisions require industry codes of practice to apply the classification system provided by the Classification (Publication, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995 to films that are broadcast and include additional measures to ensure that films are suitably modified, broadcast in appropriate timezones, and that consumers are aware of the reasons for a particular film's classification. I note there has never been a review under section 123A since its enactment in 1992 as there are alternative mechanisms for the ACMA to determine whether these provisions operate in accordance with prevailing community standards. This may be based upon the volume of complaints received from viewers or the ACMA's own inquiries. Codes of practice are also periodically reviewed and the ACMA is required to ensure that a draft code provides appropriate community protection. The Bill also repeals a similar provision that applies to datacasters which also suffers from the same redundancy as section 123A. This particular provision is even more unnecessary as there has never been an industry code of practice for datacasters. Both provisions are clearly redundant and should be repealed.

The Government is committed to reforming broadcasting legislation, particularly in areas where onerous regulation is holding the industry back. This Bill is yet another step in removing red tape from industry and reducing the cost of doing business.

Debate adjourned.