Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Before I embark on an analysis of what is in the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2006 and its impact upon parts of Australia that I work in, let me first make the observation that it is absolutely scandalous that we are not able to have an extensive debate on the broadcasting legislation more generally because of a gag now being implemented which will prevent people like me participating in that debate in the main chamber. That demonstrates to me, and I think to the people of Australia, how arrogant this government is, how it seeks to deny those who are democratically elected by the people of Australia to have their voice heard and be properly represented in the chambers in this House. To impose a gag in the way in which it is being done by the government on such an important piece of legislation, which has implications for every Australian regardless of where they might live, is a shameful exercise. I will come back to that issue more broadly later on.

The piece of legislation that we are discussing this morning provides a framework for metropolitan and regional television licences to begin transmitting digital services. The accelerated take-up of digital television has important public policy benefits. Ultimately, the successful transition to digital broadcasting will allow the return of the spectrum used for the current analog broadcasts. The spectrum can then be used for the delivery of new services such as digital radio, community broadcasting or telecommunications. Digital television transmissions began in metropolitan areas in 2001 and in most parts of regional Australia in 2004. The Broadcasting Services Act, the BSA, was silent on the transition to digital broadcasting in remote licence areas such as communities outside of Perth in Western Australia.

This bill will make changes to the regulatory framework to encourage the commencement of digital services in remote licence areas where there are only two commercial stations. This legislation will allow WIN and Prime to jointly provide a third digital commercial television service under section 36 of the BSA, free from the obligation to broadcast high-definition programs. In metropolitan and regional markets, licensees are required to broadcast 1,040 hours per year in high-definition digital format. This is known as the high-definition quota. This bill will allow the joint venture company to elect to broadcast only in standard-definition format, thereby greatly reducing the costs of making the transition to digital broadcasting.

As I said, the practical impact of the legislation is that the Golden West Network owned by Prime TV and WIN have told the government they will form a joint venture company to broadcast digital services into remote Western Australia. The new service will consist primarily of content from the Ten Network and it is expected to commence by 2007.

Labor supports this legislation. It does something to reverse the absence of policy on digital television in remote communities—for remote parts of Australia. The fact that it is only now that this bill is getting through speaks volumes about the government’s lack of commitment to remote communities. I have to say, as someone who represents some of the most remote communities in Australia, that it appals me that it has taken until this time to have this legislation passed. Shortly, I will come to what I regard as a more appalling situation—the failure to address the needs of other service delivery organisations which provide television services in other parts of remote Australia.

We all know the benefits of digital broadcasting technology. It offers better quality sound and image, the opportunity for more content and more economic use of the spectrum. In Britain, the government estimates that re-employing the spectrum currently used for analog broadcasting will save £2.2 million. Digital broadcasting has tremendous potential to provide improved services to greatly underprivileged and underserviced sectors of the community: those people living in remote communities.

The government legislated in 1998 to give the Australian Broadcasting Authority—now the Australian Communications and Media Authority, or ACMA—the power to draw up a scheme for the changeover from analog broadcasting to digital. This is contained in the BSA at schedule 4. Part A deals with the non-remote areas and contains numerous provisions relating to the rollout. The planned switch-off for those areas was originally set for 2008 but, in the middle of this year, it was extended to a more realistic 2010-12.

Part B of the schedule deals with remote areas. This does not contain specific measures for the phasing in of digital in remote areas. This matter is left to policy, yet to be developed, which is set by ACMA as per sections 7 and 7A of schedule 4 of the BSA. Supposedly, this was done to allow remote area broadcasters time to work out a digital model amongst themselves, reach a consensus and then come to the government. This is what has happened, as we understand it, with the Western Australian broadcasters.

In my electorate we have a broadcaster that covers much of South Australia, parts of Western Australia, western New South Wales and even parts of Victoria and Tasmania. The government has left the broadcasters in the dark, and they are uncertain of what form their future obligations will take. This is a concern being expressed by Imparja Television, an Alice Springs based Indigenous broadcaster that began its operations in 1988. Its first broadcast, the World Series Cricket test match between Australia and Sri Lanka, went out to the people of Alice Springs, who at that point were very glad to receive it. Imparja’s vision is the promotion of Aboriginal cultural and values. The station is wholly owned by Indigenous groups, including the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, or CAAMA, the Central Land Council, the Tiwi Land Council, the Northern Land Council, Warlpiri Media Association, the Pitjantjatjara Council, Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association, Maralinga Tjarutja trust and, previously, the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission

In addition to its main broadcasts, Imparja also carries an Indigenous television service, ICTV, a digital service available to satellite viewers and also broadcast as a local community service in up to 120 remote Indigenous communities. The channel delivers 10 hours a day of programming, over half of which is in Indigenous language. This does much to further Indigenous culture and values and, in my view, it works to empower Aboriginal people through the medium of television. Imparja’s area of operation, the central and eastern remote area licences, is the largest of any commercial network in Australia. It covers most of the Northern Territory and South Australia and, as I said earlier, significant parts of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. It has a total viewing area of approximately 4.5 million square kilometres and an audience of just 430,000.

To cover such a vast audience and distance, Imparja’s signal is pre-broadcast via repeater transmitter stations into over 250 small communities. In more remote locations, which are out of the range of conventional TV coverage, viewers need to have their own satellite dish and receive Imparja direct from satellite. This ensures that people in isolated homesteads, stations, mining camps, ranger stations, motels and other smaller communities have access to the service. There are significant cost pressures in catering to such a wide and sparsely populated geographical area.

Let me now stress the importance of the service that Imparja provides. In addition to a number of popular programs which are purchased from channels 9 and 10, Imparja provides a substantial amount of local content. As well as a daily children’s program and news service, it has provided and delivered weekly community and sports magazine programs and full-length features on the Finke Desert Race, the Mount Isa Rodeo and the Camel Cup, to name just a few.

In addition to these examples, Imparja also supports a further 85 local events within its footprint. That question of local content is very important, given the now truncated debate in the lower house. The frustration I feel as a member of this House, not being able to participate in the broader debate and make those points soundly on the new legislation which is going through the House this morning, is a shame and an indictment of this government. What we will see as a result of this legislation passing through the lower house is a concentration of media ownership, a great lack of diversity and no compulsion really for local content of the type I have just described, which is being produced by Imparja—to its credit—in Alice Springs in Central Australia.

The problem facing Imparja is the future requirement of digital broadcasting. As I mentioned previously, there is no legislation setting out how and when digital broadcasting is to be implemented in this licensing area. It is a matter of policy and involves the government coming to a working agreement with the licence holders for those remote areas. Imparja and Southern Cross Television, the other broadcaster in the remote central and eastern Australia licence area, have been submitting options to the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts since late 2002, detailing digital road maps and their respective views on different models. To this end, Imparja has employed the services of a consultancy firm, Deloittes, and its Sydney media unit. For all the work on a submission on its part, there has been, as yet, no response from government.

Understandably, this creates a very uncertain environment within which to operate a business. The CEO of Imparja, Alistair Feehan, has written to me on precisely this matter. Imparja have known since the late nineties that they would be required to transfer from an analog to a digital technology. As such, they have had to reduce capital expenditure on analog equipment and are faced with the future capital costs of digital conversion. Of course, spending money now on what will soon be obsolete technology is not an appealing option and does not make too much economic sense. At the same time, should the current analog transmission base fail, there are no short-term solutions other than an investment of further capital. This is already happening with a number of repeater television transmitters which rebroadcast Imparja in remote towns and communities. We should not underestimate the cost to the provider of addressing these particular issues.

In May of this year, Mr Feehan wrote to Senator Coonan, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, imploring her department to work with Imparja. I quote from this correspondence:

The integrity of our current service has been jeopardised due to the lengthy delays in finding a digital solution for the licence area.

He said to her very clearly: ‘The integrity of the current service has been jeopardised due to the lengthy delays in finding a digital solution for the licence area.’ What do we hear from the government minister? Nothing in response. This is just another way that this government deals with the people of remote Australia. Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, I know of your interest in the bush, and I, like you, am appalled at this treatment. On an earlier occasion, in February this year, Mr Feehan wrote to the minister:

Our major concern is that the longer the issue goes on the more business is compromised in being able to remain a local broadcaster.

I urge—in fact, I demand it—Senator Coonan to take note of Imparja’s predicament and do something about it: instruct her department to work with Imparja to come up with an acceptable solution for the rollout of digital television within that remote area that their licence requires them to service. If we do not, we are placing a heavy and undue burden on this particular broadcaster to provide an ongoing analog service when they know, you know, and everyone else in Australia knows that there is to be a rollout of digital services but there is no plan for that rollout because the government is too lazy to come to—or incapable of coming to—an agreement and to find an appropriate solution for the rollout of that service to those many communities across Australia.

Let us think about it. We are talking here about 4.5 million square kilometres of Australia’s landmass. Granted, we are not talking about Sydney, Melbourne or Perth. We know what sort of activity is happening in those places. We know where the cream is. We can see that, after the broadcasting legislation passes through this parliament today, potential investors may be lining up to purchase parts of the major metropolitan markets in media. They are not lining up to do anything in the bush because they know that the costs involved in providing the sorts of services that are provided by Imparja mean that the profit margins are very slim indeed. Of course, a business case which Imparja have to develop and have to convince their directors and their shareholders of is very difficult in an environment where the government fails to respond appropriately to their entreaties in terms of a plan for the rollout of digital.

It is worth noting in the Western Australian model contained in this bill that, while it is a way forward for digital broadcasting in Western Australia, it cannot feasibly be applied in the central and eastern remote licence areas. They are quite distinct and different areas and it needs to be understood why they are different. In Western Australia there are a number of medium sized population bases—for example, Broome, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Port Hedland, Albany, Bunbury and other places—which are covered by this licence for Western Australia. The region, as I have just demonstrated, that Imparja services is wider and far more sparsely populated. The economics of the servicing of the central and eastern remote licence areas are very different indeed from the economics of the servicing of the Western Australian licence area.

A plan to implement digital in this region—that is, the central and eastern remote licence areas—must involve the government engaging with the broadcasters and working out a plan that all parties will agree to. This cannot be so difficult. I know that the licence holders are keen to resolve this situation, but the apparent reluctance on behalf of the government to actually sit down and get a resolution is a major cause of concern. Ultimately, what we face here is the distinct possibility that there will be people in this remote service area of 4.5 million square kilometres who will miss out on getting a digital service and who will ultimately fall off the analog list as well, because at some point Imparja will be required to move over to digital. If they do not have a plan in place which is agreed and properly implemented then it is very clear that the people who are going to be disadvantaged by it are the viewers in their licence area.

Of course, these people are voters. They may vote for the Liberal Party; they may vote for the National Party; they may vote for the Labor Party. But what is happening here is that they are being disadvantaged and ignored by the government. They will know they are being disadvantaged and ignored by the government, and it is very important that the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Coonan, does something reasonable—not tomorrow, not next week, not in a month’s time, six months time or 12 months time but now. I know she has much to do at the moment to explain to the Australian community why the government should proceed in the way they have proposed in terms of the broadcasting legislation. I can tell you this, Mr Deputy Speaker: the issues of local content, diversity in broadcasting and diversity in the multimedia areas of media in Australia are extremely important to all Australians.

Despite the commitment to roll out digital television, we note that the government has done what I think is a significantly poor job indeed in promoting digital television. That is a shame because it is a technology which has a lot to offer. By stretching out the transition to digital, the government is costing the Australian taxpayers. According to the government’s own figures, it currently costs about $75 million to meet the analog broadcasting costs of the ABC and SBS and to assist regional broadcasters. This figure was taken from a Senate committee report on a host of broadcasting and media amendments, released on 6 October. A survey conducted last year by the Australian Communications and Media Authority shows the poor take-up rate of digital television, which in itself is an illustration of the very poor performance of the government in this area. Seventeen per cent of the respondents did not know about digital television at all, 45 per cent did not know if they could access it, 42 per cent were not interested and 38 per cent did not know that digital could replace analog at some stage.

The government has a responsibility to ensure that people who live in remote communities, wherever they might be in Australia, have access to digital television. What they have an obligation to do is to sit down with, in this case, the broadcasters who are responsible for the remote central and eastern broadcast areas of television and work out an appropriate plan for the implementation of digital technology in their broadcast areas. To not do so is unreasonable and unfair and, in my mind, shows the discrimination which these people are being dealt by this government. (Time expired)

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