David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

We support this bill, which contains several sensible reforms to the classification system as recommended by the Stevens review, which was commissioned under the coalition government. But this amendment shows an appalling lack of competence on the part of the government. It's very important that people understand what's actually happening here.

One of the key principles out of the Stevens review was 'classify once'. It's a very sensible principle, and it's in the legislation. Basically the principle is that if you classify something for television it should work on other platforms as well. So, rather than having to classify it for TV and then have a separate classification process for digital and so on, you classify it once. It's a very sensible position, recommended by the Stevens review and supported by the government and the opposition. The problem—and it's a material problem, and it's one the government appears to have worked out only this morning, distributing these draft amendments—is that the principle of 'classify once' entirely neglected to include the ABC and the SBS. So, the classify-once principle, which the bill said would cover the field, in fact does not do that.

I will read directly from the minister's second reading speech, because I certainly would not want to misquote in any way. It says:

This approach was advocated by the Stevens review and in the ACCC's 2019 digital platforms inquiry recommendation for a nationally-uniform classification scheme to classify or restrict access to content consistently across different delivery formats as part of a harmonised media regulatory framework.

That's a lot of somewhat bureaucratic language, but the basic point is, classify it once; it doesn't matter who does it, but it should be consistent. But the government forgot about the ABC and the SBS. So now they bring back to the chamber a request of the parliament to say, 'Well, look, sorry; we didn't think about the ABC and the SBS, so can you please agree with us to include them as well.'

Given that it's consistent with the principle, we won't oppose that amendment. But it does raise very serious questions of competence. Normally, when a bill is amended, that occurs because it's been through a process in the Senate perhaps and there's been a whole bunch of deliberation and people have pointed out different points. What's happened here is that the government at some particular point has said, 'Hang on a minute: we forgot to include the ABC and we forgot to include the SBS.' And of course the ABC and SBS have digital platforms, not just broadcast. So, their requirement to benefit from this classify-once principle is exactly the same as for anyone else.

Why on Earth the government would not have picked up this issue in the first place is I think is quite remarkable. It does go to a question of competence, and we're seeing that in this portfolio generally—drafting errors. Looking at the so-called misinformation bill that this minister has put forward, it contains some utterly extraordinary provisions—things like: if the government authorises something it can't be misinformation, but if someone criticises the government it can be misinformation. That is actually in the government's bill.

There are really serious questions here about what is going on in this portfolio and why the minister wouldn't have picked up something as simple as including the ABC and the SBS—who, after all, represent probably a third of the entire sector—in the original draft. So I've got a number of questions that I'd like the minister to respond to about this mistake. Firstly, how on Earth did this happen? How were the ABC and the SBS not included? Did the minister deliberately exclude them, or just forget? When did the minister first become aware of this mistake? And why was this presented to the parliament literally hours before this bill came before it? What action is the minister going to take to ensure that this level of incompetence isn't seen again? Does it reflect the minister's preoccupation with other issues other than this, such as directing mobile black spot funding into Labor electorates and oppressing free speech through the misinformation bill? And is the minister so preoccupied with those other matters that she hasn't had time to get the basic detail right on what really should have been quite a simple matter?

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