Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Thanks to the information in this report, we can see clearly that the sheer size and independent structure of the community broadcasting sector makes a significant contribution to diversity in our media landscape, particularly given that Australia has one of the highest concentrations of media ownership and control in the world. It was good to be involved in a report which paints such a good quality picture of such an important sector.

The committee chair, the member for Lindsay, has already thanked the secretariat. I would like to agree with her remarks that the quality of the work for this report has been exceptional—as it always is with the secretariat of our committee. I would also like to thank the 131 individuals and organisations who made submissions to the inquiry and all those who attended the public hearings in Alice Springs, Melbourne and Canberra.

According to a McNair Ingenuity Research survey conducted in 2006, more than seven million Australians, or 45 per cent of people aged over the age of 15, listen to community radio in an average month. In an average week, 25 per cent of people over the age of 15, or over four million people, tune in to community radio. Of the seven million listeners who tune in each month, 34 per cent do not listen to any commercial radio at all; community radio is their only source of radio. Also, the number has increased between the two surveys conducted by McNair Ingenuity Research in 2004 and 2006. The number of people listening has risen by seven per cent.

The sector is served by 358 current community stations, 80 remote Indigenous broadcasters and 36 holders of current temporary licences, who are collectively serving a diverse audience that covers all adult age groups—although, interestingly, 55 per cent of the audience is male and 45 per cent is female. The stations, on average, receive about 12 per cent of their total income from grants—state, federal and local—excluding Indigenous grants through ATSIC. Some, of course, receive more than others.

Community radio stations are as diverse as the communities that they serve, and the issues that they raised in their submissions and at the public hearings were also diverse. But the issue of management came up over and over again in many different ways. Of the 14 recommendations made by the committee—which concern management, training, increases in funding, affordable access to transmitters, clarifying the guidelines for marketing on air, and amendments to the Copyright Act to improve services for the print handicapped—four relate specifically to management, and they are quite important for the future of the sector.

The first recommendation suggests that a guiding template for the structure of boards be created in consultation with the industry. There was considerable input from stations regarding difficulties they had had from time to time with their overarching structure. There is also a recommendation involving $500,000 per year for four years for the development and delivery of training materials that focus on management. Again, one of the issues raised over and over again was that community radio depends very much on volunteers and that the skill in management varies greatly from station to station. Another recommendation requires that the management training be incorporated as part of the licence renewal process. Also, it is recommended that the Community Broadcasting Foundation take into account when disbursing funds the effect of management business planning and the accountability of the stations to the communities they serve.

These first four recommendations add some management burden to stations, but it is offset by a fifth recommendation which represents an increase in core funding of $10 million with indexed annual increases specifically for the funding of station manager positions. It is recognised by the committee that not every community station chooses to have paid staff—some are entirely voluntary—but others have a mix of paid staff and voluntary labour and have been talking for many years about the difficulty of focusing on longer term planning when their volunteers and their paid staff are so involved in the day-to-day operation of a station.

In addition, there is a recommendation for $5 million per year, indexed and continuing for four years, to help with the backlog of equipment that needs upgrading. Again, stations that have been in operation for many years have quite a backlog, and this $5 million per year for the next four years only is designed to help fix that backlog.

The report indicates that the expectation is that improvements in management and the additional funding for management and business planning will result in better planning of infrastructure upgrades so that perhaps in the future the backlog will not be as great. It remains to be seen whether a sector which historically serves its community to the end of its funding will in fact manage over time to put more money into the future of the station rather than the needs of the day. Mind you, I would have to say that the fact that community radio has served the needs of the day so well is one of the reasons that it has survived so well.

On the whole, there are some very good things in the report for the community sector—some much-needed additional training for management and for equipment—which the committee hopes will see the community sector remain in good stead in the future.

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