Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

We will not forget the night before the election. Tony Abbott stared down the barrel of the SBS camera and he said there would be no cuts to the ABC and SBS. We know now that that was a complete lie because this bill, the Communications Legislation Amendment (SBS Advertising Flexibility and Other Measures) Bill 2015, would not be before us today if it were not for the fact of Tony Abbott breaking his promise. It is a cut, plain and simple. He promised not to cut the funding of our public broadcasters, both ABC and SBS, and he lied. Now he is trying to make SBS viewers pay that price.

This bill is really about creating a fourth commercial channel by stealth. The 2014 budget included cuts to SBS of some $53.7 million. This bill seeks to make up for $28.5 million of those cuts. That is around at least half of the cuts that this government has made to SBS. It was a $53.7 million cut from a Prime Minister who, at the election, said there would be no cuts.

So that is where we find ourselves now in this place: having to debate a bill which should never have come to this parliament in the first place. Whether this bill passes or not, there can be no dispute that the government has broken its promise of no cuts to SBS. During the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee inquiry into the provisions of the Communications Legislation Amendment (SBS Advertising Flexibility and Other Measures) Bill 2015 that we are now debating, the evidence presented raised several critical issues in the provisions of this bill. In its own submission to the inquiry, SBS itself admitted that the subject of this bill equates to a budget cut at the hands of the Abbott government. I want to show exactly where that is clearly on display, so I will quote from SBS's submission:

As a result of the Lewis Efficiency Study, Minister Turnbull announced further cuts to SBS’s funding in November 2014. Of the cuts, $25.2 million was based on back office efficiencies that SBS was already working towards. A further $28.5 million was predicated on successful legislative amendment to the SBS Act, which would provide SBS with additional advertising and sponsorship flexibility and allow SBS to deliver this portion of the funding cut via a modest annual revenue increase.

So, SBS's own submission into this particular bill through that Senate inquiry shows very clearly how they have articulated what has been hoisted upon them, and that is a huge cut to their budget.

This bill is very much an attempt by the government to make the parliament complicit in breaking a clear promise by the Prime Minister to the Australian people that there would be no cuts to SBS. Those of us on this side of the chamber, the opposition, will not be complicit in the Prime Minister's breaking his election promise. If those government senators want to be complicit in that then I am sure you will vote for this bill. But you need to remind yourselves, as much as you do your leader, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, what this will actually mean to you, to your electorates and to you as a government as you go back to the people if this bill is passed and tell them: 'Sorry; we broke yet another election commitment. No, it wasn't ABC this time; this time it was SBS.' In doing so, all you have done is create a fourth commercial channel by stealth.

There is significant disagreement between unreleased government SBS modelling that predicts a return to SBS of $28.5 million should this bill pass and free-TV modelling that predicts a return of $148 million over four years. But the bottom line with all this is that SBS viewers should not have to watch more ads during their favourite shows to make up for Tony Abbott's lies. Why should the viewers, the electorate, suffer because the Prime Minister could not keep his word, could not keep his promise to the Australian people? SBS has an important role in our multicultural Australian society. It provides an outlet for multicultural programming, news and content that showcases Australia's ethnic diversity. So we need to be careful not to turn our SBS into just another commercial broadcaster. SBS needs to be driven by a purpose much more important than profit.

I understand that the committee also heard that the bill would mean that advertising on SBS during prime time could equal or exceed that allowed on commercial networks. So, not only is this creating a fourth commercial channel by stealth but it means that advertising could actually exceed the amount that is currently on our current commercial channels—all to make up this shortfall of $53.7 million that has been slapped on SBS by a government, by a Prime Minister who broke his promise after the election. I understand that on top of that free TV throughout that committee process testified that the passage of the bill represented a threat to commercial broadcasters themselves. So, even they are worried about their revenues and their bottom lines. Not only is this a threat to SBS, to its viewers, to the electorate, but it is actually also a threat to existing commercial channels.

If the Prime Minister had kept his word, if he had kept his promise of no cuts to the ABC and no cuts to the SBS—which he said as he looked down the barrel of that SBS camera—then we would not be in this position of having to now see SBS being turned into just another commercial channel. It is a cut, plain and simple. Tony Abbott broke his promise to cut the funding of our public broadcasters, ABC and SBS. In doing so he lied, and now he is trying to make SBS viewers pay the price.