Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

Once again this government serves up regulatory housekeeping when major reform is needed. Once again this government dithers and delays on genuine reform when industry is crying out for the uncertainty to end. Labor will not oppose this bill. We won't stand in the way of relatively minor regulatory amendments to alleviate regulatory burden on regional broadcasters, particularly in the face of concerns about the market failure of regional commercial television, but we are concerned that regional Australians are missing out as a result of this government's ongoing failure to support regional media.

Schedule 1 of the bill permits greater flexibility for regional commercial radio broadcasting licensees in satisfying their local content obligation, with minor amendments to the local content requirements and associated reporting requirements. Importantly, the bill will not lower the amount of local content that is currently available to regional audiences on commercial radio.

Schedule 2 of the bill permits regional commercial television broadcasting licensees to be deemed to have complied with the multichannel transmission quota obligation, even if they have not broadcast the required 1,460 hours of Australian content, if the amount of content on the multichannels they do carry, under affiliation agreements, is not less than the amount of Australian content on the equivalent metropolitan multichannels. This will assist certain regional and remote licensees from failing to satisfy the obligation as a result of programming decisions beyond their control by their metro affiliates. The bill will not directly reduce the amount of Australian content available to regional viewers, but does permit a reduction in overall hours of Australian content broadcast by regional broadcasters.

This bill says it all about this government's failure on regional media in Australia: it is late, it is inadequate, and it sells regional Australia short. The bill is late because it addresses an issue the government has known about since 2017, at least. The department considers this issue to be an early warning sign of market failure in regional commercial television broadcasting, yet the government is only just getting around to addressing it now. The bill is inadequate because it merely tinkers with a few provisions in the Broadcasting Services Act when a coherent, holistic and strategic package, including a wholesale reform of the policy and regulatory framework, is necessary—a fact that this government has known since it took office in 2013.

The bill sells regional Australia short, because it assumes that where broadcasters face challenges in meeting Australian content requirements, the answer is to relax the content requirements rather than assist broadcasters in bridging the gap somehow or to undertake genuine reform to address structural challenges. The bill makes it clear that regional media is facing challenges, partly as a result of this government's failure to keep the regulatory framework up-to-date, and regional Australians are missing out as a result.