Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week was another stinking hot week, temperature wise, in the Hunter. As a result, it was another week of stinking TV reception in the Hunter. As we move into this time of year, where the atmospheric conditions become highly electrically charged and the temperature increases, the residents and constituents in my electorate of Paterson suffer with a lack of television reception. This is the season where we move into the peak TV sports-watching session through the Christmas period. Predominantly people are on holidays. They like to watch their golf, and they like to watch their cricket and all other associated sports.

These issues are not unknown. In fact, since the early sixties, the issue of the ducting has been a well-known factor. The recent retune has exacerbated the situation. In fact, I questioned ACMA about the issue. In the response I got from ACMA, they said, 'There are well-known spectrum constraints in the Newcastle-Sydney-Illawarra area.' They also advised me that they had extensively consulted with the broadcasters on this restack. In fact, in November 2010 was the first meeting of the Restack Planning Advisory Group which involved my regional broadcasters.

What concerns me is the next part. The group discussed these issues and plans for ways to address them. In fact, in July 2011 they presented the working group with two options for incorporating the block planning in relation to the use of the channels. Option A was that Newcastle be co-channelled with Bowral and Mittagong and Illawarra be co-channelled with the Central Coast. Option B was that Newcastle be co-channelled with the Illawarra, as it was before, and for the Central Coast to be co-channelled with Bowral and Mittagong. In the government's view, through ACMA, the preferred option was option A. This would have moved the problem of occasional interference by seasonal ducting, through co-channelling, down to the Central Coast, and that was not a huge issue because the Central Coast, in most parts, can tune into Sydney stations.

But what we found was that in the July 2011 meeting none of the broadcasters in the Hunter supported option A. Their concern was expressed that, if people tuned into the Sydney service in the event of a ducting event, they might never return to regional services and therefore cost a loss of revenue. I say to them: you made a decision to increase this problem; you need to make the decision and fund the solution to this problem. I call on them to do it urgently.