Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to make my contribution to what is a really important piece of legislation that will affect many thousands of households throughout Australia. The Social Security Legislation Amendment (Digital Television Switch-over) Bill 2009 is aimed at making that switch-over a little easier for people who are in need, and I know there are a lot of people in need who will benefit very much from the switch-over. As is the case in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker Secker, people in my electorate have TV reception problems. These problems are not just with digital—that is the future for a lot of people—but even with analog. I know that you and I have discussed this over many years in our friendship and in our relationship over the course of a number of committees. I remember it being an issue in our first committee following election to parliament in 1998. The whole area of being able to receive television reception in hard-to-receive areas was very much an issue then and it will still be an issue with the digital switch-over.

I hope that the template your government brought to bear in terms of black spots will be one that we will be able to adopt. Good policy, no matter who introduces it, should be followed. I congratulate the former government on that. My electorate, in particular, was a beneficiary of a number of black spot programs for isolated areas and for those areas with hard-to-get TV reception. So there is a good template, and I have spoken to the current Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, who is cognisant of these issues and wants to assist. I think good work has been done in the past but we need to continue that into the future.

This legislation is about amending the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999. It is designed to allow information to be passed on to relevant authorities so that they can go about assisting people in the switch-over arrangements. That is the nub of this. I understand that the act, as it currently exists, is applicable to certain areas of government assistance but is not at the moment relevant to social security in giving permission to the relevant communications authority. It is, I believe, relevant to date with regard to information that has been relevant to people affected by this information.

Who are we trying to help? We are trying to help people in need and, as many of my colleagues have pointed out, pensioners are in need. I was very pleased to note, along with my colleagues of course and no doubt those opposite, that pensioners, particularly single pensioners, were able to get a much-needed rise in the pension, as were pensioner couples. On top of that are the other allowances that are going to flow from it, so I was really pleased about those changes. This legislation is designed to help those on an age pension, those on disability support pensions, those on carer payments and those on the Department of Veterans’ Affairs service pension or the income support supplement. They are people who will benefit from assistance in the switch-over, and the switch-over is meant to be complete by the end of 2013.

I was very pleased to contribute to the debate on our earlier legislation, the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television Switch-over) Bill 2008, amongst, I must say, a lot of late night mayhem particularly caused by some of those opposite. Their shadow spokesperson, Mr Billson, has been an advocate of good TV services in Australia—

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