Robert Ray (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I wish to raise a few issues with regard to sports broadcasting. The first one refers to Caroline Wilson’s article 10 days ago that raised the question of AFL broadcasting rights with regard to radio. That article explained that there are likely to be A and B packages, and that only commercial stations could afford the A package. That raises the prospect of the ABC having to take the B package, in other words, to broadcast the less crucial games at the worst times. I think that would be an appalling development.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been dealing with football for over 70 years in a broadcast sense. It has its own niche market. It is crucial to broadcasting to every element in Australia, unlike commercial radio, and overseas. If it were placed in the position where it could only get a B package, no doubt it would give long-term consideration to withdrawing from football broadcasting. It does 11½ hours on a Saturday and six hours on a Sunday. It is not just about service delivery. It is about the culture of the game. This is about developing and integrating football into Australian society. I think that if it were cut out of the loop just for a few extra dollars, it would be a tragedy.

Since the article, there has been the normal revolt by ABC viewers. But I have to say that, in reaction to it, I heard last Friday on the morning breakfast show Andrew Demetriou saying that he did not think it was going to happen. He has been a very capable administrator, so I will not pursue this any further tonight, on the basis that I think he will solve it. There is a role for government in this, though. It is not just about saying, ‘We fund the ABC,’ and leaving it at that. It is almost a community service obligation for the AFL to see that football reaches everyone in Australia—people with a whole different set of tastes. I just hope that will be resolved.

While I am on the question of sports broadcasting, anyone who has travelled internationally will have realised how important cricket is in the subcontinent and that Australia is more famous in the subcontinent for cricket than for any other subject. The average Pakistani or Indian could tell you who the Australian cricket captain is; they would struggle to tell you who the Prime Minister or the Treasurer of Australia is. It is something by which we are judged by a very large proportion of the population of this globe.

It was with massive disappointment that this morning I saw the crass and racist comments made by Dean Jones. They were appalling comments. Here you have an Australian broadcaster going to the subcontinent and to South Africa and talking about a terrorist taking a catch. It just happened to be the one Islamic member of the South African cricket side—a devout and religious person who always adheres to his religious principles, to the point at which he does not have the beer logo on his uniform because he is Islamic. But what do we have? An Australian face in the subcontinent—the one Australian commentator who is there—saying, ‘A terrorist has just taken a catch.’ The South African cricketer was called that simply because he is a faithful adherent to the Islamic religion.

Maybe a bit of my prejudice is coming through here, too. I regard Dean Jones as the worst cricket commentator that I have ever heard in 50 years of following cricket. People around this building will know of my previous complaints after listening to his inept, inaccurate and racist broadcasts—his utter incompetence. You do not hear it so much now because Foxtel does not carry many of the subcontinental games. Foxtel tends to broadcast cricket out of England—as it does at the moment—New Zealand and South Africa. It is not just because of a lack of interest; it is because of broadcast quality pictures and a range of things. But what we are now facing is that there are a hundred million Muslims in India; the overwhelming population of Bangladesh is Islamic, as is that of Pakistan; and there are quite a few Muslims in Sri Lanka. They all heard that comment.

Dean Jones has apologised. He said that he did not mean for the comment to go to air, just like Mel Gibson did not mean for his public comments in Los Angeles two weeks ago to become public, but they have become public. I just hope that Australian broadcasters note the reaction out of the subcontinent and never employ Dean Jones again, because he does not deserve it. He does not deserve to be employed in cricket commentary anywhere around the globe.

I was somewhat critical of Michael Slater’s cricket broadcast three or four years ago. Here is a role model for Dean Jones. Here is a broadcaster who was pretty average three or four years ago, but, month by month, he improved. He set himself the task of becoming a top-class cricket commentator. He achieved that and is being employed by Channel 9 this year—a well-deserved reward for his effort. So Dean Jones has gone down one path, down a dead-end path, and Michael Slater has had all those opportunities opened up to him by hard work and dedication.

The third matter related to sports broadcasting that I want to express great disappointment in is the fact that the International Olympic Committee is caving in to the NBC network’s demands about the scheduling of Olympic events. This is a total disgrace. Having swimming finals at 10 o’clock in the morning, going against what has been basically a tradition over 100 years, just to satisfy about five per cent of the Olympic audience worldwide is a total disgrace. Do you know why I really hate it? Because it belittles the United States and people’s view of the United States. I like the United States. I admire their political system and where they fit in the world—where they stand in terms of foreign affairs, defence and security matters. But the one thing that I hate is seeing the United States trying to impose their cultural values on everyone else. Diversity is good.

We should not have to allow one American TV network to totally reconfigure the Olympic Games. Imagine how they would have felt—for example, when they had the Atlanta Olympics or the Los Angeles Olympics—if the rest of the world said, ‘We’re sorry, we want to have the swimming finals or the gymnastic finals at nine o’clock or 10 o’clock in the morning to suit the rest of the world.’ They would have gone absolutely haywire over such as suggestion, but that is what we are left with. We are left with a situation where the International Olympic Committee, which is supposed to be independent, is simply going to respond to the one network that pays the most money. That is not the Olympic ideal and it will belittle the Olympic movement.

The final point I want to make on sports broadcasting refers to the communications package. I want to go to one very minor element. Foxtel’s sports coverage is always divided into two these days. If it is live, they put ‘live’ on the screen. If it is a live soccer match from wherever in England, you will see ‘live’ on the screen—that is the case whether it is live cricket, golf or whatever—so that the general public know whether they are watching a replay or a live broadcast. I commend Foxtel on that. What an advancement! But none of the commercial channels, or free-to-air channels, follow suit. Quite often it is deceptive broadcasting. You do not know whether you are watching something live or on delay.

Even Foxtel footy has ‘live’ on the screen if it is coming direct, but the commercial networks do not do that. This has been at its worst in the coverage of the Olympic Games where, because of their soft packaging, if you like, you never know what is live unless you happen to be listening to ABC radio. The worst instance of all was the coverage of the equestrian event in Barcelona in 1992, where Channel 7, two hours after we had won two gold medals, broadcast the equestrian event as though it was live. Incidentally, the commentators claimed that we had won one gold medal, for the individual event; they had not realised that we had won the team event.

I know it is a minor issue, but in any rewriting of communications policy it would be nice to write that in: to request, as part of their public duty, that commercial networks show that the broadcast is either live or not. It would help everyone to know whether the networks are, if you like, ‘cheating and packaging’ rather than bringing live broadcasts to the public—a public that deserves live broadcasts.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Ray, on the day the Senate has noted your 25th anniversary in this place.