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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table the explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have a second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment (Rural and Regional Advocacy) Bill 2015 seeks to clarify the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) mandate in its role as a public broadcaster.

In particular, the Bill implements guiding principles, reporting requirements and practical mechanisms for the Corporation to be able uphold this mandate.

The ABC is a public broadcaster and in turn, is expected to provide services to certain areas and to certain community groups with reference to community service and local relevance. To be more explicit, as a public broadcaster, it is expected to pay greater attention to market-failure principles and serve the areas and demographics where commercial companies would fear to tread.

As ABC Managing Director, Mark Scott, noted in late November this year, "the key to success in the digital era is to be true to your audience." Sadly, regional Australia is losing its ABC voice and the ABC is not looking to project regional ideas, culture or journalism.

Over the course of many years, we have witnessed a systemic de-resourcing of our regional services and our regional communities and the art of journalism itself is suffering as a result. These include communities where the ABC is the only comprehensive provider of news, weather forecasts and entertainment.

We are told that cuts mean they have to pick on the regions first, whilst Ultimo balloons to over one thousand staff. It is perplexing that the digital age is not exponentially improving regional media services, but that management choices are focusing on an already competitive format in the form 24 hour news and also iview. Wonderful ventures in their own rights, but whose launches collectively required the plucking of $20 million from other ABC endeavours. This is about priorities.

Not only do regional communities feel short-changed with the consolidation of resources toward east coast capitals, but regional journalists, producers and other media staff cannot comprehend why the ABC has chosen to centralise in this way. In the digital age this simply does not have to be the case.

In the context of the ABC being trusted and polling well, Australians have responded overwhelmingly in Newspoll after Newspoll (recently 84%) that the ABC performs a valuable role in society.

However, the overall trust and respect the ABC enjoys with regional residents cannot be taken for granted, particularly when there are fewer local media providers to begin with in the bush. Rural and regional Australians want media services that add value to their daily lives and which assure them of their connectedness with their local communities, weather forecasts and greater surrounds.

What many people have noticed is that the ABC's funding is being used to help it compete in commercial territory. Territory that once entered and conquered could help the ABC generate its own existence on its own two feet. Is this what we expect of a public broadcaster? No. We expect that a public broadcaster will go where no commercial broadcaster would see a business case, simply to ensure that those communities receive vital social and public benefits.

This Bill seeks to provide the ABC Board with the appropriate tools to govern the organisation in a manner which reflects the expectation the community has of public broadcasters. This Bill seeks to call the ABC to account and states in unambiguous terms what the ABC needs to aspire to when servicing our regions. This includes a physical presence and embeddedness that allows journalists to facilitate discussion and well-connected and informed rural and regional communities.

Mr Scott also recently said, "there's no commercial model that could sustain a Radio National, or that would make the kinds of investments in dramas that we are doing, or have the regional footprint full of local voices and local news the way we invest." Well, Mr Scott, regional and rural Australians would beg to differ on your claims of investment in their backyards.

We see the reduction of bulletins under the guise of allowing journalists more time to gather local stories. However, with two-thirds fewer bulletins within which to fit all that supposed extra content and the plan to broadcast them only in the early morning, of course regional Australians are suspicious and disappointed. Regional journalists affected by the changes were asking for more resources to cover the news, not more time to find it and dramatically less time to broadcast it.

Rural and regional Australians have an expectation of regular and relevant news. Not yesterday's news. Stories break, local emergencies occur – local content is more than just telling stories. The ABC is the organisation that provides rural and regional families, businesses and communities with the information they need and trust.

Given the diminished physical footprint of the ABC in regional Australia in recent years, this Bill will provide the Board with a clear mandate and impetus to direct greater investment towards rural and regional Australia. This investment would facilitate the local physical presence, training and knowledge required to support and sustain a regional media culture that is reflective of and enriching to its audience.

This Bill removes ambiguity as to ABC's mandate in regional Australia and reinforces the expectation that as a public broadcaster, its mandate is not to compete for breakfast news ratings, but rather to prioritise service to our regions with a civic purpose in mind, not a commercial one. As a public broadcaster, no economic rationalist need be brought to the table when arguing about the provision of basic services to our regions. The digital age should be expanding horizons and narrative choice, not creating local media black spots.

I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.