James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know whether it is the outer Barcoo or the inner Barcoo, Senator Back! TheBarcoo Independent is a weekly newspaper and it costs $2. I know that we are talking about broadcasting media reform, but what is interesting is that this newspaper was asking for people to donate reams of paper. A community newspaper privately owned—not a News Limited paper or anything like that—was finding it so hard to operate in a small country town in Queensland that it was asking members of the community to donate reams of A3 paper to help it put out its publication each week. On a much lower level, that shows what we are trying to achieve here with the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Broadcasting Reform) Bill 2017—and that is to make sure that our media organisations continue to survive, continue to be diverse and continue to provide a service to consumers in Australia who desire to have information, shows and products through the media organisations so they can be better informed. If we do not support this bill, what will happen is that in five or 10-years time—and we can see it already with Channel 10—we will be passing around the collection bucket, just like TheBarcoo Independentis doing, to make sure our media organisations can be sustainable and continue to operate and provide a service to the Australian people.

The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Broadcasting Reform) Bill 2017 forms part of a historic package of media reforms that Minister Fifield, along with the Prime Minister, announced back in May this year that will improve the sustainability of our free-to-air broadcasting sector. Another bill that forms part of the package is the Commercial Broadcasting (Tax) Bill 2017. This bill comprises the following measures. It reforms outdated media regulations contained in the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to better reflect the contemporary digital media environment. This includes repealing the 75 per cent audience reach rural and the 'two out of three' cross-media control rule. It will introduce some additional local programming obligations under the Broadcasting Services Act for regional commercial television broadcasting licensees where, as a result of a change in control, their licences becomes part of a group of commercial television licences whose combined licence area populations exceed 75 per cent of the Australian population. There will be amendments to the anti-siphoning scheme under the Broadcasting Services Act and the anti-siphoning notice. It will permanently abolish annual television and radio licence fees and datacasting charges payable by commercial broadcasters and will remove apparatus taxes payable by commercial broadcasters. It will establish tax collection assessment arrangements for the new interim transmitter licence tax and establish a statutory review of new tax arrangements in 2021, consistent with the broader review of spectrum pricing that is underway.

Senator Brandis interjecting—

Senator Brandis is telling me to put some passion into it.