Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note that there are 22 speakers after me in relation to this debate and that this debate is due to conclude at 9 pm. To say that this is an abrogation of our duties in the Senate to properly review legislation would be an understatement. But that is the way it is. You have to cut your suit according to your cloth, and in this case I think we might be able to make a pocket. It will be made of crimplene.

This is not a good way to legislate, and I think we should look at the commentary by Seven West Media, which said, 'It is disrespectful to both industry stakeholders and the parliament for such a complex and significant package of legislation to have been announced, introduced, considered by committees and voted on in little more than a one-week time frame'. I agree with those comments from the Seven network.

I do want to congratulate the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee and its secretariat for their heroic effort in managing to produce a comprehensible and comprehensive report in relation to this package of bills. I will confine my comments to two or three points, because I am aware that there are many other speakers who wish to make a contribution. And there is a letter, an important piece of correspondence that I received from Senator Conroy, that I will seek to table with the consent of the chamber.

I think it is fair to say that the key issues in these least controversial bills, the one in relation to Australian quotas—and I want to say parenthetically that I do not support the regulator being proposed by the government in any shape or form; I think that is fundamentally wrong. It is an intrusion on a free press and also it sets a dangerous precedent, so if those bills get in here I will not be supporting them—that the bill is somewhat vague in terms of the definition of 'Australian content'. The Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance said that they were concerned that the quotas would not be increased under the provisions of the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill—this bill. The MEAA concluded that:

The bill as it stands ... will result in a dilution of Australian drama on the main channels. Insofar as it is fulfilled on the digital channels, it is likely to result in lower average licence fees.

That, I think, is a very real issue, although there is an argument regarding the definition of Australian drama, which includes fully scripted sketch comedy, whereby some people listening to the proceedings earlier tonight might have thought that we could have complied with the Australian drama provisions!

There is one issue that I am particularly concerned about, and that is local content. I introduced legislation into this parliament last week, triggered by WIN TV pulling out of its regional television broadcasts in the Riverland and in the south-east of South Australia, which has a big impact on those communities, because of an anomaly in the legislation. I have moved an amendment to ensure that there is a review of section 43A of the Broadcasting Services Act. Shat amendment would require that the minister, within three months of the date that this act receives royal assent, direct the chair of the Australian Communications and Media Authority to undertake a review of the section with a particular focus on the importance of broadcasting material of local significance to people in distinct regional areas of Australia, and a whole range of other measures which I think are pertinent and which are relevant. While the government has indicated to me that it will not support it, I have received correspondence from the minister just a few moments ago. I seek to table this letter from Senator Conroy, dated 20 March 2013, in relation to the amendment.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leave is sought by Senator Xenophon. Is leave granted?

Leave granted.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a true copy of that letter. Can I say that despite whatever differences I have with Senator Conroy about other aspects of this legislation, I am grateful that the minister has agreed to effectively put into place, through his direction to ACMA, such an inquiry into local content, which I think is an unambiguously good thing for regional broadcasting in this country, and will be of particular significance to my home state of South Australia. I think that will be a good process, a thorough process. It effectively is almost identical to the amendment that I have moved. I think that is a win for regional television not just in South Australia but in Western Australia and the Northern Territory as well.

The process is deeply flawed. The process of these bills is completely unsatisfactory, but it seems that these two bills on convergence in respect of license fees will go through tonight. They are a package which I think there is general consensus on. I will be supporting the amendments that you, Mr Acting Deputy President Ludlum, have foreshadowed for the Australian Greens about greater Australian content. I think that is a good thing.

I am very pleased that the minister has agreed, and I am grateful, that there will be, through ACMA, a thorough review of regional broadcasting and local content that is of significance to regional communities. With those remarks, I can indicate my support for this legislation and I think that we should just get on with it. I think it is also important that if the other bills get to this place, they must not be rushed through this chamber because there are some fundamental issues involving freedom of the press and free speech that must not be guillotined, and their debate must not be constrained.

Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight we are debating the first two bills, as I understand it, and may I say that the coalition is willing to support the Television Licence Fee Amendment Bill and the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill.

If these bills are ultimately voted upon as stand-alone propositions, these bills include measures that reduce the annual licence fees paid by commercial broadcasters, set new Australian content rules for multichannels, and amend the ABC and SBS charters.

The coalition will move an amendment to one measure in the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 which has the effect of ensuring that only the ABC may offer Commonwealth funded international broadcast services such as Australia Network and Radio Australia. The coalition believes that these publicly funded services should remain contestable.

In talking about these particular bills, I do have to make some points about the process by which we have come to this particular point. I echo the sentiments, and what has actually been said, by the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, Mr Crean, who complained about the process by which this package of bills has come to the parliament, and the process by which they were developed. I think that we are all concerned about that process. It was described in one of the newspapers today as a 'mining tax moment'; in other words, a process by which an industry was effectively mugged by the detail of the measures that the government was considering.

This is not a good way to develop policy, particularly in relation to significant industry sectors that are undertaking substantial structural change. I have long believed that the best way to get structural change is to take people with you, to take industries with you. I do not believe that we have had the sort of proper public debate that would allow us to come to a sensible, national consensus about these issues. The reason I say that is that some of the issues that we are talking about today are fundamental to the nature of our democracy. That may seem a somewhat big statement to make. Yet when we talk about a situation where potentially, for the first time, in some of the bills and legislation that has been foreshadowed we can have a form of censorship of the print media in peace time, we are really talking about a very radical change to the political culture and the regulatory culture of this country. That is something that we should think very carefully about.

We have a government which, under its previous Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd—someone who is again apparently seeking high office—boasted at the height of the global financial crisis that he would put government at the centre of the economy. In doing so, he was echoing something that he had said in his maiden speech—it is interesting how maiden speeches come back to haunt you or to reflect what your real instincts are—which was that he was about putting government at the centre of the economy. The particular measures that we are discussing, or will be discussing, all go to this issue of the role of the government in regulating certain sectors of the economy. There is no doubt that we have government to do certain things as a collective that we as individuals, families or communities cannot do. But we also boast of the freedom of the press as one of the pillars of a free society. In fact, some of us go further and say that there are times when the law should be broken in order to promote the dissemination of information. You, Mr Acting Deputy President Ludlam, are one who has upheld the principle that there are times when there is a greater public good to be served by the dissemination of information that might otherwise be restricted by government or other authorities. I respect that point of view. I may not always agree with it in all circumstances but I respect it.

Here we have a situation where we talk about the government seeking to do things which are not based on some rigorous assessment of the national interest but, in part, on a view that there are parts of the media which should be silenced because they take a particular stance about the government of the day. I have worked in governments and oppositions that have taken a view about who in the media supports or does not support them. I can recall an instance, for example, when a former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, blasted former Managing Director of the ABC, David Hill, in the corridors of Parliament House because he was not happy about the coverage of the then government by the ABC.

The fact of the matter is issues of bias in the media are very much in the eye of the beholder but we as a parliament—as a collective—have a responsibility at times like this to rise above that and take a broader perspective. I do not believe we have had a process which promotes proper consideration of the very serious issues here at hand. I do not believe that the content of some of these bills we will be debating meets a rigorous test of what is in the national interest. I fear what is happening in this country today is that the political fever is rising, and that is leading to a situation where we are unable to consider issues with a proper national perspective.

Some people may say, 'That is a terribly partisan comment to make. You are blaming the government of the day.' I blame a lot of things. I also blame the spin cycle. I blame the 24-hour media cycle. They are leading to a situation where people feel that they have to fill the media gap, because if they do not someone else will. We are living in a society where increasingly there are so many sources of information available and so many ways in which you can express yourself. Look at the Twittersphere or the blogosphere; look at some of the language and concepts which are peddled in those contexts. In a sense, these bills only deal with the tip of a very large iceberg—and maybe we should not want to deal with that iceberg.

As a society we are faced with issues that are much broader than the issues here. What I fear is that these bills are motivated in large part by angst about a section of the media and its relationship with the government, as opposed to those broader issues. Yes, it is true to say there is convergence in the media, and we have to deal with that, but the reality is it is very hard for governments and parliaments to deal with convergence of the media. We can try to establish standards and regulate in certain ways but the reality is the way the media is evolving—the forces of creative destruction, if you like, through the advent of technology—is changing the very media landscape we are talking about in ways we find very hard to predict.

The reality for us is there is a point at which we have to stand back and see where the process goes. It is not easy for us to really manage the process of change in the media at the moment nor should we try to do that. I understand why, at times, people say, 'Well, we've seen what's happened in the UK. We do not want to go down the UK route.' The fact of the matter is that what happened in the UK did not happen here. That is not the model that we should follow. If the model is 'Let's try to use what happened in the UK as an excuse to get at certain media in Australia because we don’t like them', I do not think that argument washes.

Broadcasting has always been a terribly complex area because the people who control broadcasting, television and the media have a lot of influence in our society. That is true. The only way to deal with that influence, in my view, is to create a more contestable marketplace. It is not by seeking to regulate the media, in the name of government, in ways that potentially infringe on freedom of speech and personal liberties. I know this is a hard argument to take sometimes. People say, 'Well, governments are there to do things.' Yes, that is true, but sometimes the best response of government is to do no harm as opposed to trying to do something. In this particular case I believe what we must do is follow the logic of where technology is taking us.

I remember years ago one of the founders of Apple talked about the role of technology and personal computers in democratising society: going from a situation where you had big pieces of hardware controlled by corporations to a situation where everybody had a PC on their desk, democratising information and its dissemination. Thomas Friedman talks about open source information, open systems and all the rest of it. Other people, management theorists, talk about how the workplace of the future is going to be modelled on open source systems where your contribution is judged not according to where you are in the hierarchy but according to the intrinsic value of what you are saying. They are using open source architecture in IT as a metaphor for where the future workplace should go. Ultimately, that contestability is the best way in which we can deal with some of these media issues, not by seeking to control old media like print and creating some template based on this idea that they need to be controlled—that you need to replace the media barons with some media advocate appointed by the government. Remarkably, there was discussion in the other place about the Council for the Order of Australia, through a panel of eminent persons, appointing the public media advocate.

My only reaction to that is: who guards the guardians? Ultimately we need to have an industry response to some of these issues which creates greater contestability and which also creates people taking on more personal responsibility—and this is a broader issue than just media. What is happening in society today is that we seem to be continually outsourcing the government to be some sort of moral arbiter on our behalf. We have to have a situation where people also take responsibility for what they say. We see this increasingly in the Twittersphere and blogosphere with some of the stuff that people spew out there. We need to create a culture where people actually have regard for other people and respect for other people.

My view is, and has remained for a long time, that that element of personal responsibility should not be overlooked in the rush to have government regulate these things. The danger when you have government regulation is always how you can know that the government of the day will act in the 'national interest'. The national interest is always mediated by who happens to be the government of the day, so you have always got to make sure that they are acting from the best motives. All of us, government or opposition, have our strengths and weaknesses, but none of us are the repository of all wisdom. We are not omniscient. For me, there is a real dilemma about the extent to which government sets the rules.

It is true that, through the parliament, you have a clearing house, you have different views, and that clash of views can hopefully lead to a consensus about how to regulate things appropriately. I am concerned about some of the provisions that have been put into some of these bills and the impact they have on the freedom of speech in our society, or the potential they have to restrict that freedom of speech. Yes, I understand the point that people are concerned about the concentration of media ownership, but we already have a number of mechanisms to address those particular issues. We do not need a public interest arbiter on the top of that particular process.

Can I say, on the issues of local content, that I have been surprised and impressed by the extent to which local content has increased in the media in Australia. I think the reason for that is not just because of how we have regulated it but because Australians want to see Australian content. We should not apologise for that and we should not see that as something surprising. It is true of Americans, it is true of British people and it is true of others; we like to see our own content, and that is something that I think we can really build on. My only gripe about that is that I believe we can do more to promote Australian content into the region and elsewhere. I think people are interested to know about Australia, about what we do and about Australian stories because we are a unique culture. The mix we have here is unique in terms of the Indigenous component and our multicultural community. The important thing is that we have something to offer the world that is unique. I do not think that we have to worry about Australian content; Australians want it and it is a great base to build on for the future.

Finally, without being particularly critical of the minister, may I say that I feel sorry for the minister. He was sent out there by the Prime Minister with certain instructions about what to do. With the relish that he brings to any task, that minister went out there to kick heads. He said that it was a 'take it or leave it' scenario and that there would be no negotiation. That, of course, has collapsed in a heap. The Prime Minister has come in to try and resolve the situation and negotiate some compromise on important matters in these bills with the Independents and the crossbenchers, but in the process, the issue of media regulation has become conflated with the issue of the leadership and judgement of the Prime Minister. All I can say in that regard is that it is yet another example, not only to this parliament, but to Australians out there who are watching, of the capacity of this government to shoot itself in the foot. On that point, may I say that, when Australians are looking at the evening news, they see the shemozzle on media regulation, they see the shemozzle on the Labor leadership, and they ask themselves, 'How can the Australian government have been brought to this point?' We all have a responsibility to uphold high standards in this place, and I, along with others, from time to time, probably should have done better in that regard. However, the point I make now is that the minister has a responsibility and an obligation to act in the national interest. He has failed that test and he has taken the Prime Minister with him.

John Madigan (Victoria, Democratic Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013 and the Television Licence Fee Amendment Bill 2013. The guillotining of legislation leaves me at a loss. When I came to this place, I thought it was going to be a house of review. For the life of me I cannot understand how we can be a house of review when legislation is continually guillotined.

I do not doubt that there are probably some credible things in both of these bills presented to the House, but I question whether these two bills before the Senate tonight are the sweets before the poison. People often say to me that the devil is in the detail, or in this case, I fear, the devil is in the lack of detail. I do not know how anybody could possibly get their heads around such a complex couple of pieces of legislation, leading onto what we have got to look at tomorrow, and do these bills and do our constituents—the people we represent in this place in our states—the duty of care that we owe them as members of the Senate. We have got issues here in the bills after this of the Public Interest Media Advocate. I ask, who polices the police? We are on the verge of giving things to a bureaucracy that we do not even know the detail of, and people in the community honestly fear what this is about.

People I speak to quite often have criticisms of the media, and there are a lot of injustices done and people's characters besmirched in print and in television. But anybody who cares to look at some of the other forms of media will find that there are greater atrocities there that go unchecked. So be careful what you wish for because as you erode the rights of one you erode the rights of all. This will come back to haunt whoever occupies the government benches and for whomever holds the balance of power in this parliament after the next election. Holding the balance of power is not a licence to bludgeon the government, no matter who that government is; it is a privilege and it is a great responsibility for whoever holds that balance of power not to guillotine legislation, but to give the Senate the right that it deserves to do what it was elected to do by the people—that is, to vet legislation.

So as much as there may be some good things in this, I cannot honestly say to my constituents in Victoria that I can vote for any piece of legislation that has just been rammed through this place. It means we as senators cannot do our duty to our constituents. I will not be voting for any parts of any of these bills because this is an abomination of the review process of this house.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to comment on the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 2013 and the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013. I acknowledge the coalition supports these bills—two of the six in the package rushed through this week. The package was going to be 'take it or leave it', but there has been a little bit of leaving and a little bit of giving, and so here we are tonight with two of the original six that started out last week.

Like my coalition colleagues who have been commenting on these two bills today, I am outraged at the process that the Labor government has undertaken in bringing these bills to this place as part of the supposed media reforms. Like Senator Birmingham, I was part of the very, very brief inquiry into this package of bills over the past two days and I would like to put on the record our sincere thanks to the secretariat of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for staying up late, getting up early and getting quite a comprehensive report on these bills done given the time frame.

Submitter after submitter to that brief inquiry was asked whether the bills before for them actually reflected in any holistic or comprehensive way what their individual take of the convergence review was going to be, and whether it was representative of the reforms that they hoped would occur. The union leaders, the industry executives, the academics—one and all—said no, this particular package of bills was not what they thought they would be getting after such comprehensive reviews as the Finklestein and the convergence reviews.

The bills before us tonight we are supporting as a coalition. They include measures that reduce the annual licence fees paid by commercial broadcasters, set new Australian content rules for multichannels now that we live and work in a digital age, and amend the ABC and SBS charters. Importantly, these bills have the support, I believe, of the commercial broadcasting industry. It is important, if you are going to fundamentally change an industry, that you get their support and you get them on board. It will be a tool to assist these businesses to run profitable, successful enterprises in the new media landscape and that is a good thing for Australian content and for Australian consumers.

Much has changed in the television broadcasting landscape in Australia since it first came into our homes in the fifties. Gyngell's 'This is television' speech in 1956 opened the doors to what has been an astounding nearly 60 years of change and growth. In 1961 regional television commenced with the launch of commercial stations like GLV 10 Traralgon, GMV 6 Shepparton and BCV 8 Bendigo and a local voice was given to regional and rural Australia. As a young child, my first understanding of broadcasting and television occurred when, five days before the 1977 AFL grand final between Collingwood and North Melbourne, we became the third family in my very small country town to get a colour television as my father, who was a Collingwood supporter, refused to watch the next week's game without knowing who was who in the zoo.

From 2000 to now we have seen a switch from analogue TV to digital, network multichannels and more viewing choices and more competition for ratings than ever before. The Television Licensing Fees Amendment Bill 2013 will result in a reduction fee for commercial broadcasters of approximately $140 million a year, bringing broadcasters in line with their international counterparts that pay lower fees. These licenses, when they were originally granted in Australia, represented the only way in which people could receive audiovisual entertainment and, indeed, news and information into their homes. Those days are largely confined to history now as we have radio, digital radio, television, news broadcast, live-streaming to mobile phones—particularly in urban areas—and any number of commentators giving live news updates via Twitter.

The coalition and The Nationals particularly understand that a thriving and healthy broadcasting industry provides a strong platform for television networks to be competitive and to continue to evolve as storytellers, enterprises and news service providers in our local and national communities. The current broadcasting landscape poses great challenges for free-to-air television stations. They face more pressure than ever to fast-track programs from overseas or run the risk of having viewers download them from the internet and possibly not tune in to television at all. As we have seen, expanding online availability of TV programs and other forms of entertainment also poses a threat to advertising revenue for television networks. So the reduction of fees is a good thing for industry.

The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013 changes the rules that prescribe the amount of Australian content on commercial television to enhance the availability of such content. The current requirement is 55 per cent of local content during prime viewing hours on main channels, and that will be lifted by legislation. Additionally, an Australian content quota will be introduced for multichannels operated by the three major networks. When we talk about local content we are talking about drama programs featuring material written by Australian writers, using Australian actors and filmed in Australian locations—such iconic productions as The Slap and Underbelly.

The commercial television industry invested $1.2 billion in Australian content last year. Obviously, given the support on this side, we hope that that continues to grow. As Senator Sinodinos mentioned, we have a unique place, unique stories to tell and a unique landscape to celebrate. Broadcasting is a way of bringing us together to do that. It also means investment in job opportunities and other economic flow-ons for this industry.

The bill will give networks more scope to meet their content obligations for drama, documentary and children's programs on their multichannels. This is of immense importance and value to enshrining the amount of those types of programs on Australian television. In fact, in evidence given on these reforms to the joint select committee on the reach rule Mr Gyngell, CEO of Nine Entertainment, said:

The future of broadcasting is local content. It is what defines us and it is why 47 of the top 50 shows on television last year were all Australian; out of that, the top 20 shows were Australian.

Whilst I acknowledge the concerns of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance that the content quota should be higher, I think that is something to celebrate—that Australians are actually choosing to watch Australian programs. That should be evidence enough that we support local content.

The importance of local news to regional communities was one of the key messages from the Convergence Review's consultations around Australia. Commercial free-to-air broadcasters using spectrum should continue to program material of local significance. That was a fact that broadcasters themselves were cognisant and supportive of.

As the Convergence Review stated:

Australia's media landscape is changing rapidly. Today Australians have access to a greater range of communications and media services than ever before. Developments in technology and increasing broadband speeds have led to the emergence of innovative services not previously imagined.

These services take a number of different forms. In Bendigo we have our own IPTV station, where people can view lifestyle information programs and news bulletins made in and for the residents of Bendigo by streaming it onto their laptops, tablet devices or mobile phones. That is a fantastic development for many people in regional areas. However, services like IPTV, iView et cetera are still not available in a number of towns—even in my home state of Victoria. Towns like Jumbuk or Mirboo North, in the state's south, do not have broadband coverage. These places need Australian drama programs, sports and news, national and local, delivered to them via a medium that they can access, and, for the moment, that is television.

Around the issue of the convergence of media there have been some conversations around local content and the importance of it to regional communities. I highlight the need that regional Australian communities have access to local media and local content, specifically news and weather produced locally, because it helps us do our job. When you are relying on local weather patterns to ensure that you put your crop in at the right time, that actually makes a difference to the whole economic viability of your local community. Having that local content—not just the diversity of voices at a national level which, as we know, has increased over time—is important. We are an incredibly diverse media environment nationally, but, as a National Party senator, I am very concerned that that diversity is also represented at a local level.

Several witnesses have outlined their concern that legislation that will be coming before the Senate in the future, but also the concurrent discussions we have been having as a community on the removal of the 75 per cent reach rule, would significantly impact on the diversity of local content offerings. The CEO of WIN Television, Andrew Lancaster, stated his concerns about the removal of the 75 per cent reach rule very plainly:

It would be the end of regional television … there would be no differentiation between what comes out of Sydney and what is aired in Victoria.

However, the Convergence Review presented no evidence on what proportion of Australians use the internet or watch TV, nor did it analyse what would be the impact on regionally produced news or local content if the rule were to be removed. It did not make a compelling case to remove the reach rule. The proposed removal of the rule, along with three other rules around ownership, covered just half a page in the convergence report. Whilst it was a guiding principle, as stated earlier, to ensure local news coverage in regional areas, the report itself really did not go to solving the problem.

On the issue of converging media contributions to an increase in the diversity of media voice in the Australian media context, throughout the Senate inquiry into the whole package of bills, the ABC made reference to the fact that increasingly people access news and current affairs programs through wireless computers and tablet devices. I again reiterate the fact that we do. When I am in Parliament House that is exactly how I access my news and current affairs and even my weather, because I have access to a fantastic wireless signal. However, it is important to note that this is simply not the case in so many places in regional Australia. Until that is the case and until regional Australians can access the diversity of media voices in the same way that their urban cousins can, obviously any move to change legislation or the act in a way that would in any way diminish local content must be challenged.

The government's proposal to remove the reach rule has not been properly explained and fails the government's own guidelines for regulation making. It is misleading because the government has spoken of safeguards to protect local content but it has not outlined what they would be. Obviously, National Party senators will not support the removal of the reach rule.

I am conscious that there are many coalition senators who have something to say about the draconian way that this Labor government has once again usurped the people and has once again usurped the processes of this place in guillotining our conversation on legislation that actually matters to people's lives, to their businesses and to how they are informed and can ultimately participate fairly in a democracy. The rushed nature of this inquiry has already been commented on and I have made my own comments around that. It is absolutely ridiculous that here we are commenting on, as the minister has said himself, reviews and consultations that have gone on for upwards of five years yet we had a two-day Senate inquiry and four days to actually examine the legislation and make decisions. It is completely unacceptable when you look at the outcomes of the rest of the package that will be coming before us.

We are being asked to support the setting up of a regulator that will actually set the standards for media outlets and thereby the journalists who work for them. It is absolutely abhorrent in a society that values, appreciates and is built on the concept of freedom of the press. When the minister can hire PIMA, when the minister can sack PIMA and when PIMA reports to the minister, we cannot stand here in all good conscience and say that PIMA will not give any regard to what the minister thinks about its decisions.

That goes no way to actually commenting on once again another classic Labor bill before us with lack of detail. I go to sections of the legislation that may be before us tomorrow. The legislation uses vague terms such as 'fairness'. I do not think it is the media's job to be fair at all. Who is going to be crying foul of that fairness? I could go on for hours on the faults in that bill, but I do, however, support the two bills before us tonight. I look forward to watching a lot more Australian content locally.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013 and the Television Licence Fee Amendment Bill 2013, but before I do I think it is important to remind those who might be listening to the Senate this evening across Australia that this afternoon we saw the peak of this government's disregard for proper parliamentary process and proper parliamentary scrutiny of legislation. We have heard much in the last few days about the importance of a National Disability Insurance Scheme but what we saw today was total disregard for proper parliamentary participation and bringing that debate to a proper conclusion. Instead we saw it guillotined, as we have seen with these bills. At nine o'clock this evening the debate will end on these bills and they will be put to a vote. It is disappointing that I and other senators may not have—

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shame.

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Shame, indeed. It is a great shame for those people who put great value on our parliamentary traditions in this country.

As has been indicated to the Senate, the coalition does not oppose these bills. The purpose of the first bill is to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 and the Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991 to enhance rules surrounding local content to provide networks with more scope to meet their content obligations and make changes to the charters of both the ABC and SBS to reflect their online activities.

As Senator Birmingham has already indicated, the coalition will move an amendment to deal with the provisions of the bill that prevent outlets other than the ABC from broadcasting taxpayer funded international news services. The purpose of the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 2013 is to permanently reduce the annual licence fees payable by commercial television broadcasters by 50 per cent to 4½ per cent on gross earnings. As I indicated a moment ago, the coalition will not oppose these elements of the government's media reform proposals.

Yesterday during my comments when taking note of answers in this chamber I said that people throughout this building were wondering which would go first: Senator Conroy's reforms or the Prime Minister's leadership. The House has not passed the remaining elements of the media reform package tonight, as I understand it, Senator McKenzie—and others might have a different understanding—and the House has now moved to the adjournment debate. It is clear to me, and I am sure to many others watching this charade, that the minister's reforms are now in very desperate trouble. It remains to be seen how much longer the Prime Minister's leadership will survive them or indeed how long Senator Conroy's stewardship of these reforms will actually survive.

While the coalition does not oppose these bills, I do have to express my deep concerns regarding other aspects of the government's proposed changes to media laws which will have a deleterious impact on the freedom of the press in this country and contain the most disturbing ramifications for the operation of our democracy. No Australian should be under any illusion about the seriousness of what is being discussed in relation to the other bills that form part of this total package. For the first time in our country's peacetime history the government is proposing to regulate the content of the news Australians read and digest. This is a most extraordinary step for any democratic government to take. What makes it all the more baffling though is that, after all the discussions on this issue over the last week, neither the Prime Minister nor Minister Conroy have been able to offer a single solitary example of why they need to introduce this regulation.

The government is proceeding to try to pass these bills with unedifying speed. The minister announced on Tuesday last week that the legislation would be introduced and demanded its passage by the end of this week. The legislation did not actually appear in the other place until Thursday. It was not actually debated there until yesterday, and it was pushed through and presented to us here in the Senate with the demand that we get it all passed by the end of this week. As I understand it, the government is still struggling to get a deal to pass the rest of the package through the House of Representatives.

Normally that kind of speed is referred for dealing with legislation required to handle the gravest of crises—a natural disaster or an imminent invasion. So quite naturally we on this side of the chamber, the media and the Australian people are left asking: why the rush? Why the great speed? What is the crisis here? Where is the emergency? What is going on that demands the sort of pressure the Gillard government is placing upon this parliament and our democratic process in demanding it pass some of the most far-reaching reforms to media law imaginable in a democracy by the end of this week?

Of course, we all know what is going on really. The government is not pushing these bills on their merits; it is not even really trying to defend them on their merits. However, this is no longer a government that governs by prosecuting its arguments and attempting to persuade people that it is right on the issues. That time passed a long while ago. This week we have all seen that Labor are far too busy focusing on being a political party to worry about being a government. Legislation is introduced and then casually abandoned. Ministers are briefing against the Prime Minister in the media and then issuing non-denial denials to try and cover it up. There are fugitive meetings in far-flung corridors in this building as the assassins sharpen their knives. During question time in the other place, a procession of members make a pilgrimage to the member for Griffith's place on the back bench, doubtlessly pledging their loyalty to the once and future king. It is a pathetic sight: the once great Australian Labor Party brought low by a rabble of second-rate union hacks, faceless men and bewildered malcontents motivated by nothing other than the need for personal survival.

The total absence of leadership or even purpose within Labor ranks has been especially evident during the debate on these media law reform bills. Labor members and senators do not have a clue why they are being asked to rush these bills through our parliament. They just know they need to pass something—anything—to show that they are still alive and to try and hoodwink the Australian people into believing they are still governing.

Some of the performances we have seen from the government in its attempts to promote its changes to media laws have been absolutely pitiful. When asked to justify the rationale for these changes, Labor representatives have variously tried to claim they are protecting diversity in the media, protecting privacy or trying to civilise the tone of our public discourse. During Monday's committee hearing, Senator Cameron referred to the UK phone-hacking scandal as justification for these laws. Precisely why the Australian parliament needs to legislate in response to events in the United Kingdom when there is no evidence whatsoever of the same thing occurring here in our country remains a mystery to me, to the public and to many, many others—and, I suspect, to most Australians.

So, while the coalition is supporting these two bills, should the House pass the remaining bills within this package tonight the coalition will oppose them in the Senate for two primary reasons. The first is the creation of the Public Interest Media Advocate. This individual—or it could be a committee; we do not yet know, because the government cannot yet tell us—will be responsible for protecting the public interest. They will be enforcing a public interest test. They will use this test to determine whether media acquisitions can proceed by determining if such transactions are in the public interest or in the public benefit. How are a public interest and a public benefit to be defined? The short answer is that they are not, and that goes to the nub of what is wrong with this whole suite of proposals. What is the test? The government cannot tell us. How will it be applied? The government cannot tell us. What is the length of the Public Interest Media Advocate's term? What is their salary? The government cannot tell us any of this. The government is asking us to give huge, sweeping powers to the Public Interest Media Advocate, a person or body appointed by the government and answering to the government. Yet the government is unable to define the scope of these powers. In a free, liberal democracy like Australia, that fact alone should send a shiver up the spines of all of us. I draw the attention of senators to the words of Mr Greg Hywood, the CEO of Fairfax, who noted the other major problem with the Public Interest Media Advocate:

The practical application of this legislation is that it sets up a model where a minister of the government can pick up the phone to his own appointee and say 'fix it', fix it being 'get the media off our backs'.

Senator McKenzie interjecting—

Thank you very much, Senator McKenzie. I thought you had gone. 'Fix it; get the media off our backs,' would be the demand of government to the Public Interest Media Advocate. It is our strong view that the fact that a government feels it is not getting a fair go from one or another media outlet is a very poor reason to regulate. In fact, it is the worst reason. Remember, Minister Conroy is the same minister who boasted to an audience overseas that he is so powerful he can force business executives to wear underpants on their heads. Minister Conroy thinks we should give him more power. It is profoundly disturbing that this senator—this minister—thinks that the Australian public should give him more power.

This brings me to the other major problem with the proposal: the restriction these bills place on freedom of speech in this country. As someone who started out quite cautious about the work of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I was pleased earlier this week to participate in one of its meetings, where I took part in that committee's inquiry into these bills. I encourage all senators to examine the findings contained in the committee's report. That report found:

Neither the explanatory memorandum nor the statement of compatibility demonstrate why these reforms are necessary. They do not provide any detailed information or empirical data on the extent of the unacceptable intrusions by the news media on personal privacy in Australia, or of the adequacy or otherwise of existing procedures (media specific or under the general law) for obtaining redress if there is a violation of the right to privacy.

It is worth bearing in mind that this is a cross-party committee, so we know these concerns are not merely partisan. As I have noted before, the government has been totally unable to provide a single example of the wrong that these bills are supposed to correct—not one example.

With the limited time available to me, I thought I might quote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. There is a passage in that book which seems eerily prescient.

Government senators interjecting—

Oh, I thought the government had fallen asleep, but they are awake. Welcome back. There is a passage in that book which seems eerily prescient about the actions of this government:

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pursuant to order earlier today, the time for debate has expired.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a document that will be useful to the chamber.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The questions are now going to be put. The question is that these bills be now read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.