Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak on the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Broadcasting Reform) Bill 2017 and Commercial Broadcasting (Tax) Bill 2017. It is with great pleasure that I do so, even at this very late—I should probably say early—hour because the history of broadcasting in Australia is inextricably intertwined with the history of Victoria, probably something that you were not entirely aware of, Mr Acting Deputy President Smith.

Can I tell you, as senator for Victoria, this is very exciting stuff for me. I do not know whether you know, Mr Acting Deputy President, but Australia's first two-way wireless telegraphy station was actually built in Queenscliff, Victoria, in 1905 by the Marconi radio company. There is something you did not know! Let me tell you something else that you probably did not know about Victoria's relationship with broadcasting: television in Australia actually began, experimentally, as early as 1929 in Melbourne, with radio stations 3DB and 3UZ using the Radiovision system that was invented by Gilbert Miles and Donald McDonald.

But it does not end there. In 1954, the government of Menzies—another fine Victorian, I might add—formally announced the introduction of a new two-tiered TV system, which was a government funded service run by the ABC and two commercial services in Sydney and Melbourne. Of course, it was the 1956 Summer Olympics, also held in Melbourne, that was the major driving force behind the introduction of television to Australia.

But it does not end there, even. Can I add one more little bit of parochial information on the relationship between Victoria and Australia's broadcasting history: it was, in fact, an interview with Dame Edna Everage that first appeared on HSV-7's first day of programming in 1956—Dame Edna Everage, of course, being a great Victorian. That was 60 years ago, and here she is still performing today. So it is only appropriate, I think, that the reforms that we are talking about today have been introduced to the Senate by yet another great Victorian, the Minister for Communications, Senator Fifield—