Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Primary Television Broadcasting Service) Bill 2015. This is an important bill which amends the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to allow free-to-air broadcasters to deliver programing on their primary television services in either standard definition or high-definition formats.

In the time available to me, I would like to firstly briefly review the history of digital television and why there was at the time a mandate that the primary channel needed to be in standard definition. Secondly, I want to make the point that times have now changed and the continuation of that requirement would mean that Australians were missing out on the full potential of digital television. And, thirdly, I want to explain, therefore, the rationale for the legislation which is before the House this afternoon.

Let me start with the historical rationale for the requirement which presently applies to free-to-air broadcasters that they must transmit their primary service in standard definition. This is a requirement which was introduced at the start of the digital switch-over process, which was more than 10 years ago. At the time, the installed base of television receivers was heavily dominated by analog television devices, reflecting the fact that for many, many years television had been analog and digital television had only commenced in around 1999 or 2000. Therefore, at the time the switch-over commenced, not all televisions and set-top boxes were capable of receiving high-definition content. Let me explain that point. The earliest digital television receivers were mostly limited to standard definition. Only a minority of people at that time had high-definition devices, and those were very expensive. Indeed, many people were viewing digital television through a set-top box, which took the digital signal and converted it into something which could be viewed on their analog device. So, at the time this requirement was introduced, the majority of people were not able to receive a high-definition signal. The majority of people at that time were experiencing and accessing digital television through a standard-definition device, and it therefore made sense for there to be a requirement that the primary channel was a standard-definition channel.

The context goes back to the introduction of digital television in 2000. At that time, the existing commercial and national television broadcasters were given another seven megahertz of spectrum in addition to the seven megahertz spectrum they had long held which they were then using to deliver analog television, and they commenced broadcasting in digital as well. In the old analog world, that seven megahertz of spectrum was required to deliver a single channel, and consequently Australians, and indeed television viewers around the world, for decades had been used to the notion that a particular broadcaster—such as, in the Australian context, the ABC, Seven, Nine, Ten or the SBS—delivered a single channel into a metropolitan market, or indeed non-metropolitan markets as well. The arrival of digital television created a cornucopia of new possibilities, because that seven megahertz of spectrum translates into roughly 20 megabits per second of capacity to broadcast, and the innovation with digital television is that you can divide up that 20 megabits per second in a range of ways, and you can deliver a standard-definition signal or you can deliver a high-definition signal. The high-definition signal takes up more data but it produces a higher quality picture.

It was this technological change which needed to be reflected in a range of policy settings. As I have indicated, one of those policy settings was the requirement that the broadcasters must broadcast their so-called primary channel in standard definition. Let me just touch on that for a second. We had had this notion for decades that there was a single channel that a broadcaster delivered, but what happened was that the broadcasters introduced a couple of additional channels. For example, for quite a number of years now Channel 9 has had its primary channel, Channel 9, and its other two channels, GO! and GEM. Seven, for example, has Channel 7, 7TWO and 7mate. But the notion of the original single channel continuing as the primary channel became a commonplace way of thinking about the offerings, and it was reinforced by this legislative requirement that the primary channel must be in standard definition as a means of continuing to ensure the maximum access to that channel, reflecting the fact that, certainly at the time when this requirement was introduced, only a small number of people were able to receive a high-definition service—because, as I have explained, the high-definition television receiver was much more expensive than a standard-definition receiver.

The second point I want to make is that times have changed since the digital television legislation was introduced and took effect in 2000. That is why it is now timely to be updating the legislation to remove this requirement that the primary channel must be broadcast in standard definition. On 10 December 2013 we completed, as a nation, the switch-over process. From that point, there was no longer anywhere in Australia an analog signal being broadcast on a simulcast basis with the digital signal. We had moved completely to digital, following a process which had taken over a decade. During that period, there was an enormous change in the composition of the national fleet, if I can call it that, of digital television receivers and set-top boxes.

We arrived at an outcome where, according to a Newspoll survey conducted in February 2014, 96 per cent of all households had a main television set or a set-top box that was capable of receiving high-definition content. In other words, over that period of 14 years we had moved from an environment in which only a small number of people had a digital television receiver or set-top box and, of those, the majority were standard definition, to a world in which just about everybody had a digital television receiver or set-top box and the vast majority of those were capable of receiving high definition. That, of course, reflects technological evolution, the growth of the market and the very significant increase in scale in the number of digital television receivers and set-top boxes being manufactured by the major manufacturers around the world. We have witnessed over that period of 13 or 14 years a very sharp drop in the price of a digital television receiver or set-top box.

In short, we are now at a point where the concerns which originally motivated the requirement that the primary channel must be broadcast in standard definition—essentially an equity concern that many people would not be able to view a high-definition signal—is a concern that largely no longer exists, because of the very high penetration of high-definition television receivers and set-top boxes.

Yet prior to the change which is embodied in this legislation we have continued to have in the legislation the notion of a primary channel and this requirement that the primary channel must be delivered in standard definition. That has had a somewhat perverse outcome because of the fact that the primary channel typically continues to be the one which is highest rating and therefore continues to be the one on which the broadcasters show their most valuable and attractive content, particularly the marquee sporting events such as the AFL and NRL grand finals. We have therefore had the curious consequence that those highly desirable programs that millions of Australians want to watch are being seen in standard definition by many people rather than high definition as an inadvertent consequence of a regulatory setting that was put in place some 15 years ago for what at the time was a very good reason.

That does seem a shame. Australians love their sport. We love to watch sporting events of all kinds on TV, and the capacity of high-definition television to give us the richest possible viewing experience is something that Australians very much value, but we have had this curious consequence of the existing regulatory framework that we are not making the highest possible use of the technology. We are not capturing the full potential of the technology, because even though, as the numbers show us, the vast majority of Australians have a high-definition television receiver or a set-top box and are capable of viewing high-definition television, because of this existing regulatory setting, the primary channel has not been used by the broadcasters to deliver high-definition content in a way that it could be. That is the issue which the effect of the bill before the House this afternoon will fix.

The bill this afternoon simply will now give the flexibility to the broadcasters—both the national broadcasters and the commercial broadcasters—to broadcast the primary service in either standard definition or high definition as they choose. To think about it another way, this in effect gives the broadcaster or the licence holder the capacity to choose which channel it treats as its primary channel, which channel it markets and positions as its primary channel. It can do that knowing that, however it makes that decision, it can broadcast in high definition or standard definition as it chooses.

Again I come back to the fact that digital television is a technology with enormous flexibility. There are no technical limitations on slicing up that 20 megabits per second in a range of different ways. Perhaps I will rephrase that: there are some technical limitations on it, but there is certainly much greater flexibility there than existed in analog television days, when your only option was to use the entirety of your spectrum allocation to broadcast a single analog channel. The guiding philosophy behind this legislation is to remove a regulatory burden which no longer does useful public policy work but, on the contrary, in fact constrains the capacity of the broadcasters on the one hand and viewers on the other to take advantage of the full potential of digital television.

This is a measure which delivers considerable consumer benefit. Australians love our sport. We love watching sport on TV as well as going to live events and we like to see the highest possible quality broadcast that we can. We have the technology which allows sport to be broadcast in high definition. We have not been taking full advantage of that capacity. The measures in this bill will remove an unnecessary regulatory restriction and will in turn allow the broadcasters to meet the desire of Australians to see the sport that they want to see in the highest quality standard that is available with the technology that we have. This is a measure which removes a regulatory requirement which is out of date and no longer does useful work, and it will as a consequence deliver a significant consumer benefit. I commend the bill to the House.

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