Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I must say it is great to speak in the Main Committee and have the visitors gallery overflowing with visitors—if not overflowing, at least there is some participation. That is great. I hope it is not forced. I am also pleased to acknowledge that we have the honourable member for Calwell and the honourable member for Charlton in the chamber. One is a serving member and the other is a former member of the Procedure Committee. I would like to acknowledge their contribution.

We need from the start to understand that we have lost the debate about the televising of parliament and, in particular, question time. That change has occurred; whether people like it or do not like it, it has happened. We have a symbiotic relationship with the media, but we cannot complain about the media coverage of this parliament if we are forever putting hurdles up against that coverage. It is very interesting that the Procedure Committee thought—and I am a guilty party—they were making a real breakthrough in relation to the televising of question time by recommending that the media have access to iso feeds.

Of course they do not have access to iso feeds. Part of the current guidelines means that if the honourable member for Calwell asks a question, the TV cameras can focus on her for the period of her asking the question, but there can be cutaways so you will only hear the voice of the honourable member for Calwell. If the honourable member for Charlton is answering the question, the same applies. So under the current guidelines, the TV channels are not guaranteed a clean shot of the person asking the question or the person answering it. At times they may get a back of the head shot of either party. That is totally unsatisfactory to them, and we should be concerned about it. It is disappointing that so far the Speaker seems resistant to acknowledging that problem.

There is the recommendation that the parliamentary press gallery consult with the broadcasting section of DPS. This has been a longstanding issue for the TV bureaus that currently has no solution. In fairness to the Procedure Committee, if we had had any inkling that DPS and the Speaker would be so resistant to this issue, no doubt we would have explored the issue of a pool camera for the bureaus. That was recommended to us by the media when we sat down and talked to them. They came up with their problems, but when we investigated it with making no changes we found that it represented a serious health and occupational hazard to accommodate that request.

I regret to say that DPS has been intransigent with the problem. I was going to say ‘indifferent’ but perhaps that is too harsh when in fact I do not think the Speaker is indifferent. If we cannot provide the TV channels with these clean shots, at some point we are going to have to investigate other solutions which involve pool cameras in the galleries. If that means we need to remove some of the seating to facilitate that, so be it. The loosening of the arrangements for the still photographers is working very effectively. Happily, they are able to shoot from the cut-out section at the back of the public gallery and that does not constitute an occupational health and safety issue.

One of tragedies about this parliament concerns the committees. I have not spoken to a member of parliament who has served on a parliamentary committee who has not wanted to encourage greater media attention of the work of committees. But the cameras in the committee rooms have been removed. The only way that you can get any coverage for committees is if there is an agreement to put a pool camera in there. If you are really lucky you will get three of them in there. Lots of committees do lots of good work in hearing evidence and questioning witnesses, but because there are no TV cameras there the media do not get access to it. It goes unrecorded.

We have a question time—and, although we can be critical of it, it will always have some argy-bargy—that is the one thing that the public focus on. Others would like to see more balance in people’s understanding of what occurs in this place. Committees, I think, rescue our reputations. But we are not moving with the times. Any institution has to hang onto its core values, but we need to adapt and change. We cannot be strangled by tradition, by inertia or by a refusal to accept. I certainly think we need to go even further than the committee has recommended. The Procedure Committee has a tradition of making unanimous reports and its secretariat is serviced by Chamber Research. I very much regret and am somewhat surprised that the Speaker rejected the reasonable suggestions that the committee carefully and rigorously explored in both its interim and final reports.

Every member of parliament is interested to know when the in-built cameras will be restored in the committee rooms. This has been going on for a long time. Whilst I am not saying that there is any antipathy by the Speaker to the recommendation, I think members want to be kept up to date about progress. I want to make it very clear that we have a federal election coming up and should there be a change of government I hope our side will move with clarity; we will not sit on our hands. We think it is important for the institution of parliament itself that the good work of committees is able to be broadcast and publicised.

The recommendations on still photographers are working very well. I think they are very appreciative of the changes that have been implemented. On reflection, I would recommend that the Procedure Committee have another roundtable with the gallery at the beginning of the term, just as we did for our interim report, to hear the latest concerns and see whether or not we are able to meet them. I do not think that anything they have requested to date is inconsistent with a fuller coverage of the activities of the parliament. In this new century of our existence as a parliament, it seems ironic that we want to somehow gag, limit or censure what is going on in the parliament. It is completely inconsistent with the explosion of information in the age we live in.

Can I again make the point that the current guidelines to provide the feed that is broadcast simultaneously with question time does not permit what the media want because DPS focus for a time on the questioner and the answerer but are required to sweep the chamber to get off them. That is good for a balanced broadcast and shows the reactions and what have you. These changes, by the way, supersede previous guidelines which insisted that the only thing you could focus on was the person asking the question and then the person answering the question.

I am not saying that the guidelines should in any way be changed from how they currently exist for the broadcasts that DPS put out, but we do need to service the media. If they cannot do it with iso feeds, with additional cameras in the chamber, then we have to accommodate a pooled camera from the TV channels because I think they are entitled to that. Why should not the Prime Minister or the Treasurer of the day have his answer being recorded directly for all of the answer? Why should they show a prime ministerial back of the head or swing away to someone else? That is what the guidelines require at the moment and what the TV channels are saying they cannot use of a night-time—and, I think, fair enough. I am not critical of what we are seeing of the chamber outside question time, but I am critical of the fact that we are not helping the media to do their job. We can disagree with them, we can argue with them, we can object to them, but they have a job to do.

TV is the way parliament predominantly communicates with the people of Australia. The one thing most Australians understand is what question time is all about. I would certainly like to encourage and ensure that there are not restrictive guidelines so that the media can report on other aspects of the parliament which show us in a much better light, wanting to do the best thing for the people of Australia, in particular the constituents we represent. I understand that there are sensitivities. I understand that there can be misuse of these feeds. There are ways and means of dealing with that. This is the people’s House and the people of Australia have the right to see what we are doing. The best way for that to happen is by allowing greater media access to what we do.

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