Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying before, this particular bill is fairly routine for government. This particular bill was part of the government's regulation repeal day. They made a big deal about it, yet this bill only saves the industry around $350,000 according to estimates made by the Department of Communications. Having said that, much of this bill is straightforward and we on this side agree with most of it.

The purpose of the bill is to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the Radiocommunications Act 1992 and the Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005. It does a number of things. Firstly, it removes a number of provisions in the Broadcasting Services Act which were associated with the simulcast of analogue and digital television signals in the transition to digital broadcasting. I want to highlight the word 'transition' because one of the previous speakers, the member for Page, went to great lengths to criticise the previous government for having a transition period, saying that during that period people within his electorate lost their service. When you are transitioning, it does take time. It takes time to make sure you do a rollout properly.

Given the digital television rollout is complete, the changes in this bill make sense and should be supported. It should be noted, however, that these changes in no way will solve the infrastructure issues that the member for Page outlined in his contribution. That is a critical point. In the bush—and I am an MP with a country electorate—most of the issues that we have when it comes to broadcasting go back to old, out-of-date infrastructure and the need for there to be investment in infrastructure.

Bush broadcasting infrastructure is an issue around Australia , including in my own area. Prime, Southern Star and Channel 31 are just a couple of channels that I have received complaints about to do with lack of service and lack of ability to watch. Rarely do I receive a complaint, however, about the broadcasting quality WIN. Perhaps that is because in my part of the world we still have a very active local WIN office. They are very keen to see the people in our area receive good coverage.

I want to take a moment to highlight what WIN are doing in broadcasting and how important they are to our region and why it is important we see that infrastructure flow into regional broadcasting services. WIN are a major partner in our community. Every night WIN delivers local news to rural and regional homes around Australia. It is not just one of Australia's biggest regional news services; it also makes sure that we have news specific to Bendigo. Our local journos do their best to keep up with what is going on locally.

WIN in Bendigo also sponsor a number of community events and, without their support, it is unlikely that these events would occur. They range from everything from the Bendigo International Madison to the Elmore field days, the Bendigo football club, the Bendigo Inventor Awards, Bendigo community health fundraisers and charities. There are hundreds of events every year that the Bendigo WIN team support. Without them in Bendigo, these local groups and communities would miss out. So the role of our regional broadcasters is very important, not just for the local content that they deliver but for the way in which they support our local communities.

To that I would also like to add the importance of our local ABC. This is another broadcaster that is important to regional Australia. It is disappointing, however, to stand here and say that, because of federal government funding cuts, the ABC has announced that it will not be broadcasting the WNBL next season. This will end a 35-year partnership between the WNBL and the ABC. The ABC has been a leader in broadcasting women's sport and has played a significant role in boosting the development of women's sport in Australia. So it is disappointing after a 35-year partnership that this decision has been made. I believe that any decision to cancel the television broadcast of women's sport will have a detrimental effect on the participation in the sport, which will reduce the pool of talent available within Australia. That is because, without broadcasting, sponsorship dollars will dry up.

I met with Basketball Australia only last week. They said to me that the entire Opals team is underpinned by a strong and competitive WNBL. I know that I am joined by many in this House in support of the WNBL, including the member for Herbert. Unfortunately, my team, the Bendigo Spirit, went down to the Townsville Fire last weekend, but I am sure that we will rally this weekend and beat Sydney University and go on to win the grand final three times in a row. So these two regional centres are actively involved in their sport, but without broadcasting, without the televising of these games, fans would not be able to see their teams when they travelled. For example, if Bendigo is successful this weekend and we do play Townsville in the grand final, it will be the last broadcast match that Bendigo Spirit fans will see, unless the government acts to restore funding to the ABC so that they can continue the broadcasting next year.

Those are just two examples of how important broadcasting is in the regions and how we need to see infrastructure dollars flow. Like I said, those infrastructure dollars are not part of this bill. This bill does not actually save much money for the industry. This bill does not go to the core of the infrastructure issues that the member for Page highlighted in his contribution.

This bill also amends the framework used by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to plan the broadcasting services band spectrum by removing requirements in the Broadcasting Services Act and the RadComms act which are no longer necessary. As we know, this bill also removes requirement for reports made to ACMA under the New Eligible Drama Expenditure Scheme to be independently audited.

A number of the amendments made in this bill are uncontroversial. The ones that are controversial, however, relate to captioning. This bill has made an array of changes. For example, the bill seeks to remove the requirement for free-to-air broadcasters to report annually on compliance with obligations which require them to provide captioning of programs to assist vision and hearing impaired consumers with access to electronic media and to replace these obligations with a complaints based assessment. This bill also removes the requirement for a statutory review of captioning obligations. The moment that this came out, like many of my colleagues, I was contacted by people in the community that had concerns, particularly those from within the deaf community. It turns out that the minister's original assurances that key groups had been consulted were not accurate. The deaf community certainly did not feel that they had been consulted on these reforms.

A bipartisan report of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee on this bill was very critical of the lack of consultation with the deaf community:

The committee notes that a large number of submitters indicated that that the consultation processes in relation to the bill had been inadequate. The committee agrees that the breadth of consultation in relation to this bill has been insufficient.

This is a Senate committee reporting on the lack of consultation, which is such a common problem for this government. It is disappointing that the Minister for Communications has failed to communicate on this very important issue with a number of people in the community affected by this bill. The lack of consultation reflects poorly on the Minister for Communications. It is his responsibility to make sure that all affected stakeholders are engaged. Don't worry, Minister, Labor has done it. Labor has consulted and, through this work, has come up with a compromise that ensures that the concerns of the deaf community are being taken into account.

I will finish by referring to the comments made by the member for Page towards the end of his contribution, which I think were in bad taste. I believe his words were: 'Why are we worried about captions for a few people when people in my electorate do not have pictures on the screen?' That completely misses the point that the deaf community was trying to make. Yes, there is an issue with infrastructure and, yes, we need to see government working in partnership with our regional broadcasters to make sure that regional communities have pictures on their screens. But it is an entirely separate issue when this bill seeks to disengage an element of our community by changing the reporting of captioning obligations for people within the deaf community. It is just disappointing that a flippant remark was thrown into this debate, which I think waters down and dismisses the very serious concerns that have been raised by people within the deaf community.

It should be noted that the changes before us will not solve the infrastructure problems. The money the industry will save as a result of this bill, about $350,000, would probably not even fund the construction of one new broadcasting tower—not even one. That is the problem with this bill. It is a lame attempt to demonstrate that government is getting on with doing something for broadcasting. This bill is another example of a government desperate to put forward a program, desperate to say that it is repealing red tape, when all it has done is what good government does every day—not yesterday, not tomorrow but everyday—that is, to update their acts to ensure that they are consistent with the times. Local content and regional broadcasting are important issues. I call on the government to come up with a decent plan for regional broadcasting to ensure that we continue to have good regional content.

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this bill, but, before I doing so, I want to address a point that the member for Bendigo raised about Labor's consultations. If that was anything like their consultation for the mining tax—where there was no consultation or, where there was, it resulted in a tax that raised a couple of cents per person in Australia—then we are in a lot of trouble. But onto the important matters at hand. The government has adopted a strong deregulatory policy agenda and is progressing changes on the way in which regulation is created, implemented and reviewed. The key principles of this reform agenda include: that regulation only occur where absolutely necessary; regulation should not be the default position in public policy; and important consumer protections need to be maintained. As we know, the former Labor government simply announced sweeping media and telecommunications reforms and more regulation without consultation. Any possible changes to media or telecommunications regulation must be consultative and reflect this government's ongoing commitment to better regulation.

Let us look as the track record on better regulation so far. In our bid to boost productivity and reduce regulations, we took to the Australian people at the last election a target of a billion dollars per annum of savings in regulatory costs to industry and not-for-profits. We have far exceeded that with over $2 billion, as outlined. The communications portfolio is still fundamentally based in the mid 1990s as far as its regulatory framework goes, and that is why things need to change. The measures passed on repeal day, 1 March 2014, together with the submissions from repeal day in October last year, will generate cumulative savings of over $94 million for consumers and businesses with 3400 pages of redundant or obsolete regulations repealed. It is common ground that regulation has a cost to those entities which must comply with—good regulation balances these costs against the assessed benefits by ensuring that regulation is appropriate for its objective.

Going to some of the specific matters of this bill, one matter is the reconsideration of the need for strict compliance measures, such as requiring broadcasters to complete annual captioning reports up to 445 days after the broadcast, even though the sector has near 100 per cent compliance rate; or requiring subscription broadcasters to prepare detailed applications to temporarily exempt new channels from captioning, when a significant majority are granted on the merits in any case. It also requires ACMA to review the content classification rules and codes, when the codes are already subject to regular review. These are all examples of regulatory requirements that do not reduce safeguards for consumers but have a clear cost for broadcasters and ACMA.

The bill also removes unnecessary legislation, as I said, and reduces the burden. The amendments form part of the government's communications portfolio commitment to the Australian government's deregulation agenda. The government strongly supports all Australians having access to television services and the captioning of television services is an essential and important part of achieving this goal. The bill does not reduce captioning standards or targets. The government will not make any changes to captioning targets now or in the future. The coalition is simply seeking to reduce the regulatory burden on industry and improve the administrative arrangements associated with broadcasters captioning obligations. One particular amendment of this bill, part 9D, aims to assist viewers with a hearing impairment by requiring Australian free-to-air broadcasters and subscription television licences to meet specified levels of captioning for television programs.

I want to talk about regulation and compliance in a different way. Last Friday I hosted the Prime Minister at Deloitte in my electorate and I discussed a Deloitte report, 'Get out of your own way: Unleashing productivity' with him. The cover page of the report said:

Australia has a problem—

Mr Champion interjecting—

and Nick Champion is a part of that.

Australia has a problem and its colour is red. We need to free our economy from the stranglehold it has on Australian productivity.

Deloitte goes on to name a number of areas of regulatory burden that could be removed. It is pleasing to note that they talk about business more so than government. They make the point that the private sector imposes many rules and regulations of its own, and these carry a huge cost. They came up with a figure of $94 million to administer and comply with the public sector rules, which we are addressing, but also $155 million to administer and comply with self-imposed rules and regulations in the private sector. This affects our productivity gains, and this is why the government is so intent on reducing red tape and regulatory burdens across the board—firstly in the public sector where we can make tangible differences to improve their operations and then to encourage the private sector to take a look at their rules and regulations.

The cost of these rules is significant, as outlined. It is something that we as a community need to address from a number of angles. The Deloitte report also looks at some structural challenges on a strategic level. They have outlined this in a way that the Labor government could never have executed or implemented properly. That is the difference between the two sides: we use our private sector background and expertise to fix the problems Australia faces and we look forward to creating a strong and prosperous economy.

In closing, the changes we are outlining are required. We have made some significant achievements in this deregulation agenda, but there is more work to do. That work is incumbent on government and on the private sector to tackle unnecessary rules and regulations in our workforce and in our business operations. The better we can do that, the better our productivity can be and the better our economy can be.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a great pleasure to follow the member for Hindmarsh. He actually made an interesting point, about the Deloitte report that he referred to, that it is the private sector that is imposing many of these regulations and rules that so frustrate people. I think that is an interesting point because people tend to point the finger at government, and in fact much of the red-tape burden, if you like—which is part of modern society, I think—is actually private sector driven.

Needless to say, we support the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014. It is part of the regulation repeal day, that great march against the complexity of the modern world. There is just one problem for those opposite: the previous government repealed 16,794 acts and regulations, so it is not as if there is one side of parliament that is in favour of complexity and unnecessary regulation and another side of parliament that is not. Nobody is in favour of excessive red tape. Nobody is in favour of unnecessary acts and regulations. Everybody is in favour of doing what is sensible and pragmatic. That is what we do as a nation, as a parliament. This is simply the normal course of business in this place.

But unfortunately, rather than just presenting this as the normal work of government and getting on and doing it, they have to make all this spin and hoo-ha and PR about what is entirely unremarkable. That has sadly been, I think, the mark of those opposite. We see now much division and instability in those opposite. The member for Wentworth sits there stony faced. Of course, he is up to his neck in it; we know that. And they are so focused, I think, on the salesman and not the policies, not the substance of what they are doing, that they are tying themselves up in knots. It is not good for this country, and I can tell you that many of the people I meet out in my electorate are entirely unimpressed with those opposite, who promised adult government and have given us childish games and spin, PR and the oversell.

This bill focuses on getting rid of some of those regulations that were to do with the transfer from analog television to digital television. I think everybody would regard that transfer as being a successful one. I know that in my electorate we led the way. There are a couple of suburbs in my electorate, Hillbank and Craigmore, which were in the shade of the Mount Lofty television tower. For 25 years and perhaps longer they had terrible TV reception. One of my predecessors, Martyn Evans, in the seat of Bonython—

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Good bloke!

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

a great bloke—helped to fix up some of those reception problems with ABC and SBS. But of course the commercial television stations were still intermittent. They broke up. There were various problems for them.

It was one of my election commitments to fix up TV reception in Craigmore, and we managed to do that in my first term. You know, when 150 people turn out to see the tower being constructed, that it is a popular thing. On Friday at midday, I think, most of them were there just to make sure it was actually happening. But that, I think, was evidence of how, if you get a clear signal, you take it for granted—television is part of modern life—and if you cannot get it you know all about it.

It is disappointing to hear remarks from those opposite failing to acknowledge the importance of captioning. Captioning is important for deaf Australians. I have a number of concerns, I guess, about the way that the government had been approaching consultation and indeed policy outcomes with deaf Australians. We know that the Minister for Communications, when he was introducing this bill, said:

… ACMA and my department have consulted with industry and key accessibility groups on a range of potential reforms that primarily seek to improve administrative arrangements for the free-to-air broadcasters and subscription television … while requiring that they continue to meet their captioning obligations.

But then we later heard from the Chief Executive Officer of Deaf Australia that Deaf Australia had not been consulted. That is not a really good outcome. We note that another arm of this government later acted to defund Deaf Australia and indeed impair its ability as a lobby group, as a voice for deaf Australians. That is really concerning. So we have government legislation not taking into account their needs, and then we have a defunding of their organisation. That is very concerning indeed.

The bipartisan report of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee has also identified that consultation on this bill was inadequate:

The committee notes that a large number of submitters indicated that … the consultation processes in relation to the bill had been inadequate. The committee agrees that the breadth of consultation in relation to this bill has been insufficient.

That is not a great reflection on the Minister for Communications. He has probably been busier consulting his backbench—well, not his backbench, not yet anyway; we await that moment in time, once they conclude on a successor to the current Prime Minister. We all know what is going to happen; it is only a matter of time, I guess, before that happens.

So there is a lack of consultation and a defunding of the organisation, and then of course we see other government policy which will directly impact on deaf Australians. First of all, there is the potential privatisation which is being examined by the Department of Finance at the moment, not taking into account any consultations with Health or any consultations with the Department of Human Services. It is just Finance, bean counters, looking at privatising Australian Hearing, an organisation that has been around since 1947, and the National Acoustic Laboratories as well, as part of that. These two institutions provide vital services and vital research. If you go out to Macquarie University, in Sydney, to the Australian Hearing Hub, you see the impact of that research not just on services but on technology and on medical exports, which do not just help Australians but help the world.

All of this is being done as part of an obsession with privatisation, because this is an institution which has survived many governments. It started out in the Chifley government to help veterans who had been injured by prolonged gun and artillery fire. It was there to help children who had suffered in the rubella outbreaks. It survived the Chifley government, the Menzies government, Gorton, McMahon, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating, and Howard. This was a national institution. Indeed, to give some credit to Prime Minister Howard, he actually increased funding in this area. So that is something that needs to be taken account of. This was an area of bipartisan support, yet we see in this bill, in the defunding of Deaf Australia and in the privatisation of Australian Hearing and the National Acoustic Laboratories a really concerning impact on deaf Australians.

We know that the government are now talking about welfare reform, hoeing into the disability support pension—being able to access it and the very structure of it. So we wait to see what will happen there. We know that the government defunded Gonski, undertaking $80 billion worth of cuts. The impact of these cuts is yet to flow through to schools, hospitals and state governments. We know there has been a culture of conservative state governments standing mute in the hope that something will happen within the government and that, down the track, some fix will be made. Who knows? The member for Wentworth might be more agreeable than the current Prime Minister. We just do not know, and we await the deliberations of their party room, I guess, on that front. We have no idea about what possible future policy approaches might be done. It is a very big concern, because we know that that Gonski funding had disability loadings in it which would have helped and made a huge difference in that area, not just for deaf Australians but for all of those children who have a disability and who deserve a fair go at school.

As I said before, government, of course, is a leviathan, and I guess that is why we hear those opposite talking about red tape repeal day and all the rest of it. But the one concerning thing about this is that, for all the rhetoric of those opposite, we still find in this area one arm of government acting intolerably, without consultation with deaf Australians. We see the defunding of their organisation. We see the potential privatisation of the services that they use year in and year out. That is very concerning, and this bill represents just one part of our concerns in this area.

To conclude, red tape repeal—the repealing of unnecessary regulations—is not the province of one side of parliament; it is something that has been done regularly in this parliament and in state governments. We should not have to deal with the hoo-ha, the PR and the spin of those opposite. We should not have to deal with the rhetoric of those opposite, which is so frequently over the top. They do themselves a disservice, because the community knows that we live in a modern world where regulation is necessary. The situation with some of our foodstuffs coming from overseas demonstrates that, in a modern, complex world, you do need regulation that will protect consumers and the public interest. Labor stands ready to have a modern regulatory approach to these things, but the community should not have to put up with those opposite blowing their trumpets every time some minor amendment, minor regulation or unused act is repealed in this House.

Eric Hutchinson (Lyons, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I apologise to those in the gallery, because some of them may be a little confused as to what the legislation before the House today, the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014, actually entails. We heard the member for Wakefield talking about pretty well everything else there. He did mention, though, towards the end of his contribution the word 'policy'. That is very much, as I think we all know, a policy-free zone on the other side of the House at the moment. Empathising with every Australian is fine if you offer a solution, but there are no solutions coming from those opposite. It is only complaints—no solutions.

We are in the business—tragically, it is our lot in life—of fixing up the mess of six years that we inherited from those on the other side. They were the bad tenants that trashed the joint and have locked the door to stop us getting back in to fix it. That is the reality. The debt that we inherited was not a clean sheet of paper. It was not a clean sheet of paper that we inherited on 8 September. We had deficits literally as far as the eye could see that were booked up by the previous government—some might even say booby traps left by the previous government for the incoming government to deal with. Every single day, this government is having to deal with the reality that our revenue is $110 million less than our expenditure, and it is simply unsustainable. So, until those on the other side can offer a solution, they deserve not to be heard.

To the bill at hand. I am pleased to rise and support it, and I am pleased to see the Minister for Communications in the chamber here before me. I will just reference some of the comments that he made in a keynote address recently. He mentioned semaphores, and so I thought I would reflect on them. There is a semaphore that runs up the Tamar River, Deputy Speaker. You may not be aware of it, but many years ago it was used to signal to the town of Launceston when ships were coming through the heads at Low Head. There was a second semaphore at Mount Direction, about halfway down the Tamar River, on the eastern side of the Tamar River, in the electorate of my colleague the member for Bass, and then one on Windmill Hill. For those who know where the aquatic centre now is in Launceston, right next to it, on Windmill Hill, there was formerly a semaphore thing. But I guess it goes to show that communications is an evolving and changing place every day whether it be from carrier pigeons to the marathon runners to the mail services to the telephonic services, satellite services increasingly and, of course, the world we live in today that is inhabited by the internet, email and the different ways that we communicate.

I represent a regional electorate. I represent those communities essentially outside of the population centres in Tasmania. My electorate covers 50 per cent of the island state. The communities that make up my electorate reasonably demand and expect that their communication services are at least comparable, and it is so pleasing to see that when the new government came to power the Minister for Communications refocused the disaster that was the NBN rollout; there was an attention to those communities that were not like South Sydney, Caulfield or so forth, which had quite reasonable ADSL services. The emphasis or attention was on those communities that had none or very poor communications. That has been welcomed.

We have had a very successful rollout of wireless NBN throughout my electorate. Indeed, the simplicity and the capacity of people to be able to, if they wish, sign up for that technology has been encouraged and welcomed. The mobile phone black spots—I am going to put my hand up and say that we are the mobile phone black spot capital of Australia. I think we nominated over 140 sites. I understand that the $100 million the current government has committed will not be able to solve every issue, but certainly there are communities there that are anxiously awaiting news in that regard.

But television absolutely is still important. It is a way that many regional households and communities still like to get their evening news. There were real challenges. I note the comment of the member for Wakefield and am very pleased that in his electorate the transfer over from analog technology to digital was a smooth one. That has not always been the case in parts of the electorate that I represent. The topography in particular has presented challenges. I again thank the minister, his staff and the department for responding when we have communicated with his office about the challenges that some communities are still having in respect of television communications.

But the critical thing to remember here is that there has been broad consultation about this bill. There are a number of recommendations after that consultation. Out of the Senate committee report there were two recommendations that addressed some of the concerns that were raised, and it is very pleasing to see that that consultation has taken place. It is good to know that those on the other side are indeed supporting this bill.

The purpose of the bill is to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the Radio Communications Act 1992 and the Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005 to implement industry preferred changes in this portfolio. The bill intends to amend or remove provisions in the act which were associated with simulcasts of analog and digital television signals in the transition to digital broadcasting and the restack of spectrum which was commenced after the last analog signal was switched off. I will not go into detail in that space; others have covered that. The bill will also rationalise requirements for operators in the industry, including removing the requirements for free-to-air broadcasters to report annually, so it is a red tape issue as much as anything else—not reducing the standards but just making it easier for business to report. What we want from business and business in this space in particular is to offer the best services that they can to as many Australians as they possibly can. Compliance and regulation are indeed important; but, when that compliance and regulation becomes burdensome, it is the responsibility of government to responsibly look at removing where they can. That has been a priority of this government since day one.

It also changes parts of captioning target obligations for subscription television and the assessment of quality of captioning of live and prerecorded broadcasts for free-to-air and subscription broadcasters.

As I mentioned, the communications portfolio has done its bit and identified as a particular target of reform red tape and green tape as particular targets for reform, as they are subject to substantial levels of very complex and sometimes necessary regulation. But, where it is not necessary, we have acted. The proposed changes have been introduced as a result of consultation with industry and other stakeholders, including the hearing impaired. Indeed, those groups have expressed some concerns, and they have been addressed in the changes and amendments to this bill. The bill responds to those as well as other concerns about subscription television licences and the radio and television broadcasting sector.

Free-to-air television lobby group Free TV in its submission to the National Commission of Audit claimed that free-to-air broadcasters were subject to a considerable number of reporting requirements, including those that were unnecessary or had substantial penalties for non-compliance. A number of government members have also for a long time expressed concern about the loss of local media voices and that the local diversity and competition in regional and rural areas would be lost unless adjustments were made. Those adjustments have been made. To reflect: I do not have any one centre. I have three metropolitan centres in which media providers are located. Indeed, their transmissions into regional areas of Tasmania are absolutely critical to services and to the capacity of people to receive their evening news via television. In my electorate—or any large rural and regional electorate—we would be particularly concerned if television and radio in the forms they are currently presented were in any way compromised.

I believe also that people should voice in some respects their discontent with the ABC's decisions, particularly in regard to rural and regional Australia. The recommendations that came out of the Lewis report highlighted the fact that there was absolutely no necessity for services, particularly services in regional Australia, to be impacted by those modest cuts. The capacity was there, within management, with inefficiencies—that can be found in every business—to make those things. Whereas it appears that decisions have been made—which perhaps were the decisions that management had already reconciled to undertake—that have been detrimental to some services in regional Australia, and regional Tasmania as well, and that is particularly disappointing.

The legislation that rationalises the delivery of new digital television will also be welcomed by the people in my electorate of Lyons who have been particularly affected by the switch-over from analog to digital services. As I mentioned before, we have had major problems in Tasmania in certain areas that we are still addressing that have much to do with the topography of certain parts of the state. In particularly hilly areas, with mountains in between—often in country communities—newly designated towers which are supposed to provide signals have not provided that. During the switch from analog to digital some people who had enjoyed full television reception for years lost all services. I refer particularly to my constituent Derek Thompson from Moltema in north-west Tasmania. His situation is typical of a number of calls we have had in that particular area over a number of months.

Moltema is a country area about 10 minutes drive north of Deloraine, a major northern rural Tasmanian town. The Thompsons, like most of their neighbours, have always had good television on analog, but it is one of those black-spot areas in my electorate of Lyons for mobile phone coverage. So they not only cannot access mobile phone coverage but increasingly they cannot access television. With the switch-over to digital television, Mr Thompson lost all television reception, so basically they lost all contact with the world.

Mr Thompson thought he had prepared for the changeover to digital—previously investigating all the research and installing the necessary equipment—to make the changes smooth. But he and some of his neighbours lost their services anyway. Mr Thompson, despite not having spare cash to invest in all the extras that digital television providers said he needed, persisted; he bought new aerials and other equipment and even climbed up on his roof a number of times to point the aerial in different directions, finally pointing it at a tower on a distant mountain, after it was discovered that a reception tower nearby had been switched off.

We eventually got television reception back for Mr and Mrs Thompson, and then they and their neighbours lost it again when a new 4G mobile network was introduced in their area. We found out that the Thompsons and their neighbours needed to install a filter on the back of their television sets to filter out the interference that came from that new mobile phone network. Fortunately the first filter that he tried was the one that fixed the problem, but it just highlights the fact that there are particular challenges in rural and regional areas that sometimes those living in the big cities do not always appreciate. But again I thank the minister; I thank his staff; and I thank the department for the cooperation and the work they have done in assisting us in finding remedies to a couple of these issues.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014. The purpose of this bill is to amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the Radiocommunications Act 1992 and the Media Authority Act 2005. This legislation implements changes to the communications sector which, I am advised, are broadly supported throughout the communications sector. Among the changes to be introduced by these bills are    the amendment or removal of provisions necessary in the transition to digital broadcasting; and the amendment of the framework used by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to plan the broadcasting services band spectrum by removing some requirements which are no longer necessary.

Deregulation is something the Labor Party supports, where appropriate. It is often necessary in order to improve efficiency, especially in industries like communications which have changed so much since the time of Federation, when we were talking about telegraphs and the like, through to the digital age. The former Labor government implemented many deregulation reforms. We did not have press releases put out when we did this, because deregulation is important to maintain and improve competition and productivity in the Australian economy. The former Labor government, without any fanfare, without putting out local press releases, repealed 16,794 acts and regulations. This is the everyday work of governments. You do not need a press release. You do not need to give yourself a medal and say, 'Aren't we great!' just for turning up and doing our job. Unless you are devoid of reason, unless you are devoid of vision, no government would ever do that. So it is sad to see the 'red-tape day' trumpeted by those opposite as 'one of the great achievements' of their 18 months of being in government.

One of the reforms included in this bill will remove certain requirements for free-to-air broadcasters in reporting on compliance with obligations requiring them to provide captioning of programs. And that is what I am going to particularly turn my mind to in this speech. The vision and hearing impaired community are particularly concerned that these changes will reduce the captioning services provided, and may eventually result in the loss of the requirement for there to be 100 per cent captioning from 6am to midnight on primary free-to-air channels. Deregulation may be necessary, but it always needs to be coupled with extensive community consultation and engagement with the affected industry or community or stakeholders.

Unfortunately with this legislation, the Abbott government, and in particular, the Minister for Communications, have not consulted adequately with the vision and hearing impaired community that may be affected by this bill. I would urge the minister to recognise that even if stakeholders are deaf it does not mean that you do not consult with them. We are living in the information age, and those of us who are not hearing impaired receive information almost constantly, from the moment we wake in the morning and sometimes until we go to bed with an iPhone in our hands. From radio to television and to the internet; if we miss a radio or television broadcast we can download the broadcast and record it, or see it on our phone and listen at our leisure. The days when the entire community is watching the same bit of media are long gone. It is a fragmented media market now.

However, the digital age is a particularly different reality for those Australians who are hearing impaired. One in six Australians are affected by hearing loss, and around 30,000 Australians have total hearing loss. With an ageing population these numbers are only going to increase, with now one in five Australians being over 65. People with hearing loss, obviously, can still be very productive members of society. They hold down all sorts of jobs, they are taxpayers, they are workers and they can do many things. In fact, one of the things that I do note about former Prime Minister John Howard was that he was hearing impaired, but he got on with the job of working hard for the Australian people in the way that he saw fit. That is something I often mention in terms of working with a disability and still going on to serve your community. So one-sixth of the Australian population currently relies on broadcast captioning to receive information.

Recently in Queensland we felt the brunt of Cyclone Marcia cross the coast just north of Yeppoon. I have a sister and her partner who live in Biloela, which was affected by Cyclone Marcia, and they also have a property at Byfield, that was particularly hammered by the cyclone. I know what it is like. There are electricians out working hard at the moment trying to restore power. As Queenslanders, when we have so many cyclones and floods and with so many of us living on the coast, we know how important the information is.

During Cyclone Marcia so many of us were tuned into our radios or watching television to get the latest forecast of where the cyclone was likely to make landfall and how dangerous it would be. The difference between a category 3 and a category 5 can be life or death in terms of how people respond. So we do need to make sure that the communications are appropriate. The hearing impaired people in the vicinity of the cyclone would have been relying on captioning to get the latest news broadcasts. I know that there was also some Auslan interpreting being done when Premier Palaszczuk was communicating with people, but the captions still play an important part. Imagine how fearful it would have been for them not to have had access to this information.

The reliance on captioning by the hearing impaired is real and vitally important and, as I said, will only become even more important in the years ahead as we enter this time where we have two generations retired simultaneously. The fear of not having access to that captioning service is also real and should have been taken much more seriously by the Minister for Communications. Maybe the Minister for Communications finds it easier to talk about himself than to hear the concerns of those people who are hearing impaired?

The concerns of the hearing impaired community were also reflected in the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights in their Sixteenth Report of the 44th Parliament in the Senate, which examined the bill. It said:

… the committee considers that the measure would represent a limitation on the right of persons with disabilities …

The report sought further advice from the Minister of Communications.

The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee conducted an inquiry into the bill. Mr Kyle Miers from Deaf Australia, in evidence to that Senate committee, said:

… 'information is power'. We access information through various mediums: radio, public announcement systems, theatre, the arts, online, emergency announcements. There are various mediums to access information, but many of those are not accessible to deaf people, because they are not captioned. So, we rely heavily on accessible information via the television.

The Community and Public Sector Union said that any reforms to captioning regulation should be focussed on improving captioning services for deaf and hearing impaired Australians.

My electorate has a particular connection with these reforms. Deaf Services Queensland is located in Moreton, on Ipswich Road. It is an organisation that has been operating in my electorate since 1903. It is the leading provider of support services and information to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community in Queensland—not just in Brisbane but right up to the Cape—from Coolangatta to Cunnamulla, to Camooweal and to everywhere in between. It is a very worthy service. I have been in consultation with the CEO of this service, Brett Casey, and its employees over many years. I know that Brett Casey might be watching this speech at the moment—hopefully, having someone translate it—a big thumbs up to you, Brett, for the input you have had into this speech. Brett Casey has for many years been involved in community events. He has turned up to community events and they have organised translators to be there so that the hearing impaired can access the information as well. Brett Casey, the CEO of Deaf Services Queensland, commented about the proposed reforms from the government, 'Implementing a complaint based assessment process therefore puts the onus on the deaf and hard of hearing viewers, who would then need to complain in regards to the captioning standard.'

He went further, explaining his disappointment with the government's handling of this reform: 'My understanding is that it was a Liberal government that developed the compliance regime in 2001 when captioning was introduced on free-to-air broadcasting for prime-time viewing with amendments to the broadcasting act. It seems the LNP are forever 'giveth' and then 'taketh' from the community. Seems the broadcasters have some close LNP friends.'

After listening to the hearing impaired sector, Labor has worked through the concerns that they have raised and have sought changes to the bill. I note that the member for Blaxland and shadow communications minister is in the chamber, and has raised many of these concerns. He has sought changes to the bill that will make it more palatable for the Labor Party. These changes will ensure that broadcasters will still be required to report annually on their compliance with captioning obligations. Labor has also ensured that there will be a statutory review next year, in 2016, of all the issues that concern the deaf community and broadcasters, including captioning.

To their credit, the Abbott government have understood these concerns and have supported the changes put forward by the Labor opposition.

However, I do stress again that this is where the government should have consulted much more thoroughly. It should have engaged with the deaf community and the broader communications area. Minister Turnbull definitely was negligent in not doing that. He failed to address the real concerns of a vulnerable sector of the community and the hearing impaired community deserves much better. In fact, all of the people involved that will be impacted by this legislation deserve better. Perhaps the communications minister could spend less time talking about himself to the backbench—those 39 and counting—and more time doing his job.

With the changes made to this legislation by Labor, by the member for Blaxland, the honourable Jason Clare, this is now a bill which will ease the regulatory burden in the communication industry but will retain the safeguards around these vitally important services that I have detailed. I support this piece of legislation.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased today to have the opportunity to speak on the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014. It is amazing isn't it? Each and every day we wander in here and the scaremongers are at work. They know no shame, they know no boundaries whether they are trying to scare students or scare pensioners and now they are trying to scare people with a hearing impairment. It is extraordinary.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is wrong.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is wrong, as the member for Banks just prompted. And that is not what we are here for. Yes, we can have our political debates on the deep philosophical policy issues that face our nation; that is fine. Those opposite need to cut out this nonsense of trying to lower themselves to a point of just scaring people to make base political points.

This bill does not reduce captioning standards or targets. Let's just clear that up for one moment. The minister has left the chamber at the moment but I am sure he must have sat there with his mouth tightly closed as he had to listen to a number of the contributions from those opposite who were making downright incorrect, false, misleading, deceptive claims. This bill does a lot of things. It is basically a red tape reduction bill. It is trying to find more efficient administrative arrangements, as this government has been trying to do since it was elected. But please, those opposite, do not come in here and use parliamentary privilege to try and scare vulnerable people in our community by spreading completely false information.

As I said, this bill is about reducing the regulatory burden around captioning standards and targets. If those opposite read the bill or took the time to have their researchers and their speech writers actually look at the details of the bill and the ramifications of the bill, they could not find their way to the speeches that they are contributing today. They should actually look at the facts and maybe then we could move on in a positive fashion.

The coalition went to the election committing to cut the regulatory burden for businesses to boost productivity. Businesses, entities, bodies—whatever you want to call them—within the communications sector are no different. The Department of Communications is a big department. It is responsible for what some would argue are the most central planks of our day-to-day life. Whether it be mobile phones, the digital economy, broadband or online safety and security—keeping in mind that the cyber safety helpline that has been introduced recently has had 95,000 hits in the last financial year—our telephone services, our television services, radio or Australia Post, it is a huge department with a huge responsibility to deliver services that are probably a central plank in the lives of each and every one of us.

What the department is trying to do, as we would expect all departments under the instruction of their ministers and obviously the Prime Minister to do, is find ways to make life easier within the departments when it comes to administrative arrangements. We do not want to try and cut corners or take people to a lesser value for the service but just to find sensible ways to save red tape and that is what this bill does. Again, I repeat: there is nothing in this bill that will reduce captioning standards or targets. They should stop saying that on the other side.

Since the Abbott government was elected, we have been seeking new opportunities to lift the burden on businesses and help them to do what they do best—that is, to employ more people and create economic growth. Governments should not be in the business of employing people. Governments should be in the business of creating an economic environment and a social environment where the rest of the country, the private sector, can thrive, have confidence in the future, prepare to invest and hope that at the end of the day someone will gain a job from it because we are creating wealth and building the essence of this nation. No part of the economy is exempt from this government's search for red tape reduction.

I note the minister has released the Communications portfolio: Deregulation Road Map 2014, which outlined this government's deregulation agenda within the communications portfolio. This bill implements a number of the measures identified in that report. I take great exception to speakers previous who indicated that the member for Wentworth should hang his head in shame because he has not consulted. What a ridiculous assertion to make in this place. There was a deep consultation process through this with industry to identify other opportunities to ease the regulatory burden including repealing the redundant licensing and planning provisions that regulated the digital switchover and restack processes. What a tremendous advancement in our lives. The biggest revolution in this area since the introduction of colour TV, I suspect, in 1975 was the switchover from analogue to digital.

Measures included in the bill will: amend the Australian Communications and Media Authority's planning powers to implement more streamlined processes when planning broadcast spectrum; remove the requirement for reports made by certain subscription television licensees and channel providers to ACMA under the new eligible drama expenditure scheme to be independently audited; introduce minor amendments to the control and ownership provisions; remove the requirement for ACMA to review codes of practice under sections 123A and clause 29 and schedule 6 to the BSA; and, finally, make consequential amendments to schedule 4 of the BSA as a result of the Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) Bill 2014.

That is what this bill is about.

The last two decades have seen an explosion in the advance of technology and communications in a way that probably most would not have expected. Our children do not quite get it. I have young adult children and they think this is the way the world has always been—we have always had mobile phones and we have always had access to the Internet and done all the things that they have become accustomed to. They look at us cross eyed when we try to inform them that this is not the way it has always been, that 10 and 15 years ago life was vastly different, let alone 35 or 40 years ago, in the case of many who sit in this chamber. The world is a vastly different place and technology has exploded.

The Minister for Communications, who is now back in the chamber, is one of the few in my view who have demonstrated both here in his leadership capacity and in business his acumen and ability to be a leader in this part of the economy. We are in good hands. To assert from the other side that this minister has not consulted or in some way does not understand the implications of the bill that he has signed off on, so to speak, is just a ludicrous claim.

Unfortunately, in many cases laws and regulations have lagged behind those advances and to some degree that is what this bill is about. It is a catch-up bill in many respects. It is trying to bring the regs and red tape processes in line with the advancements in technology. It is a mismatch at the moment—we have processes that are matched to the 1970s and the 1980s let alone the 1990s. This is what this bill is about. We all know that regulatory measures of 15 years ago will not apply. This bill will rectify those outdated regulations and help the industry to remain competitive and not be bogged down with redundant red tape.

There is no doubt that the digital revolution rolls on, with weekly announcements of technological breakthroughs and tech companies announcing with much fanfare their latest gadgets. Members in this place are probably some of the quickest to attach themselves to these gadgets. I notice some of my colleagues walking around with Maxwell Smart watches and so on. We are in the midst of this explosion of technology and we have people of all ages—grannies, grandpas, mums, dads, children and young adults—wanting to be a part of the technological advances that make our lives so much more interesting and make what is going on around the world more accessible, even though some would say that that is not always a good thing. Generally I think it is a good thing. If we can keep technology under control and keep it out of the hands of those who seek to do evil, do wrong and infiltrate the minds of our young people, we are on the right track, but let us not suggest for one minute that the advances in technology have not been good for humankind.

As I have previously stated in this chamber, there are areas of my electorate of Braddon on the north-west coast and King Island that have all sorts of problems with television reception—and I am pleased the minister is here because he and his office are aware of this. I note some of my colleagues, on this side at least, have been drawing attention to this as well. Residents in Queenstown, Rosebery and Strahan—the mining towns of my community; the wealth creators of my region that send off masses of taxes that enable other social services to be provided to every other part of the state of Tasmania—may not be big in number but are mighty in their contribution to our electorate. I get calls from those in the mining towns. It is fair to say that there are not a lot of services available to them and there is not a lot to do, but they love their community. TV and technology access is a very important part of their lives. Imagine how they feel when the TV reception suddenly disappears in the middle of an exciting cricket match, a football game, the news or, dare I say it, Q&Amaybe that would be a good time for me for it to go down, but that is another matter. That is just not acceptable and there is a lot of work to be done.

Whereas in the past poor television reception resulted in a grainy or fuzzy picture, which was frustrating enough, now with digital television it is all or nothing. Poor reception results turn immediately into no reception results at all. It is all right for me to chuckle out the side of my mouth—I do not experience that in the suburban area where I live; that does not happen to me on a frequent basis. It is so frustrating for them. It happens regularly.

I have written to the major television stations—I had only one courteous response; the others did not even respond—asking them: one, to explain what is going on; two, what the solutions are; and, three, what they are prepared to do about it. Some of my colleagues have already mentioned this. I say to them today publicly in the privileged place that this is that they have a responsibility. Businesses are saying to me in chambers of commerce that this is a bit rich—'The television station salesmen come and sell me packages of adverts on the pretence the ad for my products is going throughout my region, reaching every nook and cranny, down to the West Coast and onto King Island.' They do not get a reduction in their bill when it is found that for a day and a half there was probably only 20 per cent reception in the mining towns on the West Coast.

They have an obligation. They are taking revenue. They provide a great service—do not get me wrong; do not mishear me—but they do have an obligation if they are taking money for advertising from businesses to advertise in every nook and cranny of my electorate to make sure that that ad reaches the people that it has been paid to. I call on them today to find solutions. There are solutions. There must be a solution in this explosion of technology that I spoke about. I know it is relay upon relay upon relay—I get all that—but you cannot tell me that there is not a way to get a better result.

According to Southern Cross Austereo, who did take the time to respond to me, the signal is beamed from Launceston to Devonport, relayed from Devonport to Burnie, relayed from Burnie to Waratah, relayed from Waratah to Rosebery and, finally, relayed from Rosebery to Queenstown and Strahan. The signal is getting weaker and weaker as it goes along. We have to get it fixed. I call on the television stations to do the right thing. I am happy to work with them to communicate with the community about that. While the West Coast of Tasmania is struggling, it is not just there; there are other patchy places in the electorate. It is really important that we get this matter fixed.

What an exciting world we live in! Advances in technology are giving us access to magnificent options to reach family and friends around the world and to do business around the world. This bill is to pull away the regulations that are so out of date it is not funny. I commend the minister and I commend the bill.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014. As I am the shadow minister for disability reform, this bill is of particular interest to me as it seeks to amend certain requirements for the captioning of television. Of course, this is a critical service for people with hearing impairment right across Australia. Captioning, the text version of the audio component of a television show, enables deaf and hard of hearing Australians to engage with news, current affairs, sport and entertainment. Captioning enables deaf and hard of hearing Australians to enjoy television in the same way as the rest of us. Without it, people with hearing impairment face significant barriers to accessing information that so many of us take for granted.

Submissions to the Senate inquiry into this bill make clear the importance of captioning to the deaf community in Australia. Kyle Myers, the CEO of Deaf Australia, stated in Deaf Australia's submission to the inquiry:

There are various mediums to access information, but many of those are not accessible to deaf people because they are not captioned ... we ... the deaf and hearing impaired community ... rely heavily on accessible captioned information via the television.

Another respondent in Deaf Australia's submission stated:

We miss out on a lot of information every day wherever we go. We cannot hear radio because it is hard for deaf people to understand ... We rely on information from news and programs on TV when adequately captioned and where available. It provides us with daily information of what is happening every day. Hearing (non-deaf) people listen to radio, public announcements and ALL TV programs every day at any time ...We are the ones who are missing out a lot.

And another respondent said:

Captioning is vital to accessibility. All programs should be captioned. The deaf and hard of hearing should not be confined to set hours or types of programs. It is a simple means of increasing accessibility.

So the message from deaf and hard of hearing people across Australia is that we should not be limiting access to captioning. Certainly Labor would oppose any measure which sought to water down the requirements on broadcasters to provide captioning or which sought to reduce the availability of captioning. Following the introduction of this bill, we received correspondence from the deaf community raising their concerns about the original form of this legislation. Over the last month, Labor has done what the minister should have done. We have sat down with deaf advocacy groups and the broadcasting industry and worked through their concerns with the changes that are reflected in this bill. As a result of this work, Labor has developed a compromise that I am pleased to say both sides have agreed to. This will restore the requirement for free-to-air broadcasters to report annually on their compliance with captioning obligations and it will restore the statutory review of captioning, which will occur in 2016. This will allow a comprehensive review of all the issues that concern the deaf community and broadcasters.

I am very pleased that the shadow minister, who is here in the chamber, has moved amendments to this effect in this debate today, and I understand that the government has agreed to support these amendments in full. I thank the shadow minister, the member for Blaxland, for his work on these amendments. In particular, I thank the peak deaf bodies who have provided feedback to me and the member for Blaxland. I note that the shadow minister, the member for Blaxland, has also successfully secured the support of broadcasters for these amendments. Frankly, this is work the government should have done themselves. They should have sat down with the deaf community and consulted them on these changes, and I am very disappointed that the Minister for Communications did not do that. It seems the government was more interested in trumpeting 'Regulation Repeal Day' than doing proper consultation and getting the policy settings right. Nevertheless, it is good that the amendments moved today by Labor will be supported by the government and we will see captioning protected so that deaf Australians will not be disadvantaged.

Of course, this piece of legislation is not the only issue facing deaf Australians. Let's not forget that, just two days before Christmas, the Abbott government savagely cut funding to disability organisations. They slashed funding for Deaf Australia. They also slashed funding for the Deafness Forum of Australia. These two peak organisations together represent the approximately four million deaf or hard of hearing Australians. These cuts will affect hundreds of thousands of Australians living with a disability, including deaf and hard of hearing Australians. And I am sorry to say that this is only one of the many changes that the government has made which will impact on the deaf community. The government has also walked away from its promise to fully implement Gonski measures that would have better assisted students with a disability. Clearly, this government has no understanding of what these cuts will mean to children in our schools who need these services. It was in fact only a few weeks ago that the extraordinary Drisana Levitzke-Gray was awarded Young Australian of the Year for her work advocating for the rights of deaf children. I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate her on her award and thank her for all the work she has done for the deaf community. Drisana is deaf herself and an inspiration to many people in Australia, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing. She is an extraordinary young woman whose work will become of greater and greater importance as this government unfortunately seeks to cut funding, particularly to those advocacy groups that represent the deaf community.

One of the other very serious changes the government is examining is whether or not it will privatise Australian Hearing. If the government were to privatise Australian Hearing, it would put thousands of Australians at risk of losing access to vital services. It would cut research funding for improved rehabilitation for Australians with hearing impairments. The loss of hearing affects a child's speech and language ability and organisations like Australian Hearing are vital for providing support to hearing-impaired children.

All of these measures have been implemented without any consultation with the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. Sadly, as I said before, it appears that this was the case with this bill too. The submissions received as part of the Senate inquiry make clear just how poorly the minister has engaged with the deaf community on this issue.

When introducing the bill last year, the minister gave assurances that he had consulted with industry and key accessibility groups; but following the introduction of the bill the CEO of Deaf Australia, Kyle Miers, wrote to members of parliament advising that Deaf Australia had not, in fact, been consulted. In his formal submission to the Senate committee he went further and stated:

… we (Deaf Australia) did not have an opportunity to provide any detailed feedback. They (the Department) just told us what the proposed changes were going to be. I do not believe that there has been any adequate or appropriate consultations with consumers or broadcasters.

This reflects very poorly both on the Minister for Communications and the department, and I would emphasise that it is his responsibility to make sure that all affected stakeholders are engaged. Now, unfortunately, Deaf Australia have had their funding cut so it is going to make it even more difficult for them to advocate on behalf of people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

We know how critical it is to make sure these organisations are able to put forward the views of those many Australians who depend on services like captioning. Once again, I am very pleased that the shadow minister at the table, the member for Blaxland, was able to step in and find a solution so that the captioning system that so many deaf and hard-of-hearing Australians rely on will continue.

David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am really pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this important piece of legislation, building as it does upon the strong work of the coalition government in the broader deregulation area and specifically in the communications space. Since our election 18 months ago, with our two repeal days, the various measures we have put forward to the parliament have saved about $94 million in compliance costs and other associated costs and got rid of about 3,000 pages of redundant legislation. That is an incredibly important part of public policy in this area.

One of the questions you have to think about in this area is why there is so much regulation to be repealed. Understanding that is really important to understanding why the initiatives of the government in this area are so critical. The television industry would have to be one of the most highly regulated parts of the Australian economy, particularly in the free-to-air industry. What this government recognises is that many industries are changing and none more so than television and particularly free-to-air television. In that context, the last thing you want to do is burden industry with unnecessary red tape that does not do anything helpful for consumers, viewers or businesses and that really, frankly, gets in the way of running a sensible business operation.

You have to go back to the question of why there is so much regulation in free-to-air television. To do that you have to think: what is the public asset that free-to-air broadcasters enjoy access to, how is it linked to the high degree of regulation in this area, and how is that changing? The asset that free-to-air broadcasters have privileged access to is spectrum. It is a bit of an abstract term; most of us probably do not spend a lot of time thinking about what it means, but it means certain bits of the airwaves that are particularly valuable and that allow you to transmit a moving picture, in a nutshell. Historically that has been what is called the analogue spectrum; more recently we have moved to the digital spectrum, which I will come to in a moment.

What we have faced for many decades is a situation where the only way you could get a moving picture into the home was through the broadcast spectrum. There was no other way of doing it because scientists and engineers had not come up with any other way of doing it. That meant if a business had access to that spectrum, it was in an incredibly privileged position. Empires were built on that access. Understandably, governments of various persuasions said, 'If we are going to give you access to this extremely valuable public good, we are going to require you to comply with certain regulations.' That is why we see such an extensive list of regulatory requirements in the free-to-air area. Of course over time scientists and engineers have worked out other ways of getting a moving picture into the home. As that occurs, the power of broadcast spectrum will decline.

We started out with the VCR in the eighties, and in the nineties DVD players came along. We also had cable and satellite in the nineties and then, from the early 2000s onwards, first fixed-line and then mobile internet have been of sufficient quality to get a moving picture into the home—not just into the home but into a whole bunch of other places.

As a consequence of that, the free-to-air industry has changed quite radically. It does not have a monopoly on getting that access to the home, and the habits of viewers are changing considerably. It is very important to understand this background.

You have to think: where is this all headed? I suspect there will be a day when broadcast spectrum will become completely irrelevant, and that is when all homes will have access to a sufficient quality picture through other means—most likely the internet and in some places mobile or satellite. But that day is coming. It is probably within this decade—within that time frame—and then broadcast spectrum is frankly meaningless.

The situation faced by free-to-air broadcasters is they have gone from being a monopolistic provider of television services to the home to one delivery mechanism amongst a number—although free-to-air today is still the only way every home in Australia can get broadcast-quality content.

The member for Braddon was talking about problems which persist with broadcast spectrum. There are of course a number of homes, particularly in regional Australia, that cannot get broadcast-quality TV. They rely generally on a satellite service, but the vast majority—99 per cent of Australian homes—can get broadcast-quality in the home via broadcast spectrum. The percentage of homes that can get broadcast-quality 24 hours a day is rising—through the tremendous work of the Minister for Communications, ably assisted by his parliamentary secretary—and will continue to rise through the sensible NBN, which we are building, and the growth of mobile networks. But it is still not 100 per cent—it is still a way off but it will eventually be 100 per cent.

Broadcast spectrum will be irrelevant, because everyone will have access to a moving picture and, at that point, the broadcast networks will have no particular standing that is any different to anybody else in the world. Anybody at that point will be able to provide exactly the same thing into the home.

Massive changes are going on in the industry and, when industry and markets change, governments should change too. The fundamental question we, as a government, must ask ourselves, is: what is our role here; why is the government involved in this; what is it in fact that we are attempting to do; what are the problems we are attempting to solve; how involved do we have to be; do we have to hold the hand of the television industry every step of the way; or should we get out of the way and remove regulation that does not help while keeping important regulation in place that protects viewers?

The changes in the industry are well reflected by some numbers and it is interesting to look at how things have changed in the television industry—with all of this informing the appropriate response from government. If you look back to 2003-04—so 10 years ago—the broadcast networks Seven, Nine and Ten collectively made EBITDA, a measure of profit, of $740 million. Ten years later, because of all the forces that we have been discussing, that had dropped to $493 million—so that is about a one-third drop over 10 years. That might not sound so bad but, if you contrast that with what was happening in the economy more generally, it is actually a very steep decline. For instance, federal government revenue in 2003-04 was $188 billion; in 2013-14, it was $374 billion. So federal government revenue nearly doubled, and the television sector profitability in that same time was reduced by a third.

Ten years ago Foxtel did not make any money at all; last year it made twice as much as the entire free-to-air television industry combined. So Foxtel made EBITDA of $970 million. So this is a changing marketplace and, in that context, it is important that the government responds sensibly.

One of the things that the previous government did and handled with a degree of competence was the restack from analog to digital spectrum—television broadcasters now use a smaller part of the spectrum, which enabled an auction process for the previous analog spectrum and the government raised considerable funds from, principally, the mobile telecommunications industry so that was a sensible reform. The amount of spectrum for the free-to-air industry was compressed for the benefit of the broader economy.

If we look at the measures before us today, sensible one and all—captioning is something we have spoken about quite a bit this afternoon, and the government is absolutely committed to the maintenance of very high-quality standards in captioning. Captioning is in fact required on free-to-air broadcasts 100 per cent of the time on the primary channels between 6 am and midnight, so the vast bulk of viewing.

There have been some anomalies and some unnecessary complexity in the system, and it is good to see that the opposition is supporting some of the sensible adjustments to the captioning regime that are included in this bill, such as the 12-month exemption from captioning obligations for new channels; the ability to aggregate a captioning target across a number of sporting channels when they are offering related programs—for instance, a tennis event; and a number of other things to do with record keeping ACMA, the regulator, is certainly nothing if not a record keeper and if we can reduce the requirements for records to be kept and forms to be filled out it is to be entirely encouraged.

Drama is a highly regulated part of the Australian television industry, and a number of subscription TV channels are required to spend about 10 per cent of their programming budget on local drama, supporting local producers, actors and so on. That continues but there is no longer a need for an annual audit of that process. That is a sensible reform and, again, a very sensible red-tape reduction measure. In my electorate of Banks there are numerous pay TV channel providers that are very important in our community, and I certainly commend TVB, which provides terrific Chinese language services right across Australia, and World Media, who provide Arabic and other language services right across the nation. It is important that we do not overly burden these subscription TV operators with unnecessary form filling, and it is good to see that we have made that change.

Licence area population is a very complex area in which many lawyers have made a lot of money over the years, but we are making things a little simpler. If ACMA chooses to change the definition of a licence area, rather than having the potential impact of a broadcaster being required to sell a station and/or to provide substantially more local content, that will not be required. That is a good thing because if ACMA changes the definition of a licence area, nothing has changed in terms of what the broadcaster is actually doing; they are still broadcasting the same shows to the same people and therefore the requirements should not change, because they are not in themselves changing anything at all.

As we talked about before, digital switch-over has been an ongoing process for a number of years—right back to around 2005-06. It is completely finished now and the management of the end of that process was done very effectively by this government. There were lots of transitional provisions during those six or seven years and the import of much of that was: what you do in analog you must do in digital, and vice versa. Those provisions are no longer required, of course, because analog is no more, so those requirements should be deleted from the statute books.

It is good to see in this legislation that ACMA is no longer required to formally conduct reviews on the classification system. We have seen ads on TV about the television code and seeking input on the television code. There is lots of community consultation about these matters. ACMA needs to sign off on any final classification scheme and it is certainly within ACMA's rights to refuse to sign off on something if they think it is inappropriate, but they should not have to conduct formal reviews simply for the sake of doing so.

There are very strong deregulatory measures here. They take account of the changing nature of the broadcast industry and I commend these changes to the House.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014. I think it is important that we look back at the journey for communications and how we got to this point. Technology is evolving at an exponentially-increasing rate. I note the minister said in his contribution that legislation is playing catch-up with technology. It is not just the legislation; it is the infrastructure that delivers the ability to use these systems. There will be constant change and it is important that we look at things in a watershed position.

I clearly recall as a young child playing with one of my brothers at our grandmother's house with two jam tins and a piece of string. If I were to suggest that to my children at the moment, the first thing they would ask me is, 'What's a jam tin?' The second thing they might ask me is, 'Why would you do that when you could just text one another?' Quite simply, technology has moved rapidly and exponentially.

As a young student university I remember purchasing a computer, a 386SX. It cost me somewhere around $2,500, and the next level up would have cost some $4,000. We are now using devices which cost a few hundred dollars and are far better than the ones we used previously. It is important that we maintain our attachment to technology and it is important that we maintain technology so that people can access it—and not just in the cities. It is incredibly important that we provide facilities to people in regional and rural Australia because, quite simply, they have lost their other services. This is the only point of access for them for many things, including government-provided services, and they need continued access to it—never more so than in our current circumstances.

The natural events which have occurred in Queensland again this year have demonstrated just how important our communications network is. I would like to relay a couple of recollections which have been provided to me in recent weeks. In Rockhampton and Yeppoon they have an enormous amount of difficulty communicating at the moment because everyone is reliant on mobile technology. Centralised systems such as the old phone network are relatively easy to back up. It is quite easy to provide additional backup power with generators and batteries. When they do run down it is a single point to provide other emergency services to provide power to that system. In a distributed network such as the NBN, those things are individual per street and per house and it is far more difficult to look after them then. Quite simply, they have about an eight-hour run time on a loss of power. If you look at the situation in Rockhampton and Yeppoon at the moment, in most locations they will probably not have power before the end of the week and some will not have it for two, three or four weeks—which makes it incredibly difficult. As we move to digital systems through not only the Australian government but also business, you simply cannot operate without those facilities.

There has also been an exponential increase in growth around mobile devices. People simply are not tied to a desk and a PC anymore. They all have mobile devices, they like to be connected wirelessly, and you cannot do that with a cable that runs down the road for five kilometres while you drive your car.

The other thing I would like to point out—particularly as the minister is in the House—is the exceptional job that ABC regional radio did during the recent emergencies and of course during the ones in my home town of Bundaberg in 2013. Scott Lamond, Kallee Buchanan and the rest of the team at the ABC are responsible for the emergency broadcasts. They work incredibly long hours and they do a fabulous job, and we are very supportive of the work they do.

I note the bill looks at captioning reform. There have been many contributions on this through the debate and, given the time, I will keep this brief. The bill also looks at the New Eligible Drama Expenditure Scheme. But one thing I would like to discuss are the changes to ACMA. My predecessor, Mr Neville—the former member for Hinkler—has retired in the electorate, and he is a passionate advocate for communications. However, as a well-informed and retired MP, he is an incredibly noisy constituent when it comes to ACMA, in particular. With the digital changeover that occurred recently, one of our issues was unfortunately at Mr Neville's home where he suggested the particular actions I should take as the local MP in order to fix the issue that was affecting his house and his family, and we did sort that out.

It is incredibly important that we roll the NBN infrastructure out and we roll it out successfully. It is one of the largest infrastructure projects this nation has ever undertaken. As an electrical engineer and as someone who has some project management experience, I know that it is incredibly complicated and incredibly expensive. I fully support the fibre-to-the-node network put forward by this government. It will be work; it will be far cheaper; and it will be far more successful. As we push forward in the next few years, if changes in technology continue to increase exponentially there will be other changes and other challenges. You only have to look at something like quantum computing, where Australia leads the world. It is something which could actually make this nation one of the richest in the world if they can successfully put together a quantum computing system. So it is very important that we get this right. From my point of view, rural and regional Australia is incredibly important. If we look at what the former Labor government did around satellites, we see that these systems were oversubscribed and they simply do not work. It has been of no benefit to people in my electorate.

There are further changes around media diversity and the digital switchover and restack, which of course is spectrum change. But, as was put forward by previous speakers in this debate, changing the spectrum may well not be necessary down the track because, quite simply, everything will be delivered through the NBN. We have incredibly large changes through our communications network. It is a very challenging period for our TV producers and for people who work with radio. As was stated, they are restricted by certain rules that were put in place in the nineties when the technology was incredibly different. I do not want to take up all of the time of the House, and I am sure the minister would like to get the bill on the table, so I commend the bill to the House.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the members who have contributed to the debate on the Broadcasting and Other Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014. The bill amends the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the Radiocommunications Act 1992 and the Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005 to remove unnecessary provisions and reduce the regulatory burden on the broadcasting industry. The bill forms part of the communication portfolio's commitment to the Australian government's deregulation agenda. It implements a number of measures identified in the Communications portfolio: Deregulation roadmap 2014and addresses issues that have been raised through consultation with the broadcasting industry.

The bill repeals the redundant licensing and planning provisions that regulated the digital switchover and restack processes; amends the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s planning powers to implement more streamlined processes when planning broadcasting spectrum; improves administrative arrangements and provides greater flexibility for free-to-air and subscription broadcasters in relation to their captioning obligations; removes the auditing requirement for the annual returns on program expenditure that subscription broadcasters and channel providers lodge with the ACMA under the New Eligible Drama Expenditure Scheme; and addresses anomalies in the provisions relating to overlapping licence areas for media diversity voices and commercial radio licensed areas and in the grandfathering arrangements relating to license area population determinations; removes the redundant obligation for the ACMA to review classification and time zone safeguards under section 123A and clause 29 of schedule 6 to the Broadcasting Services Act; and makes consequential amendments to schedule 4 to the Broadcasting Services Act as a result of the Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) Bill 2014.

The government acknowledges the Senate committee's support for removing annual captioning reporting requirements on free-to-air broadcasters and remains committed to moving over time to a compliance model that does not require unnecessary reports, while taking account of feedback from hearing impaired groups. The government will continue to consult with broadcasters and media access advocates on potential reform to annual captioning reporting requirements—noting that all sides agreed that the existing reporting requirements arrangements are overly complex and onerous.

I noted that a number of honourable members have said that the government did not consult with peak bodies in the deaf community. I advise the House that, prior to the bill going into the parliament, the Department of Communications met with the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network on 15 May last year and it met with Media Access Australia, which is Australia's only independent peak organisation devoted to increasing access to media for people with a disability—and therefore is a peak body representing deafness groups. The ACMA met with Media Access Australia in April 2014 and also participated in the 4 June 2014 meeting. I myself met with the Human Rights Commission on 31 October last year and my staff met with Media Access Australia, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, the Deafness Forum of Australia, Deaf Australia and the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations on 21 November 2014. I recall one honourable member saying that there had been no consultation with Deaf Australia, and I am advising the House that that is not the case; they certainly were consulted. People with Disability Australia Incorporated were also invited to that consultation but did not participate. As soon as the bill was introduced into the House, we referred the bill to a Senate committee for further investigations. Public submissions were accepted, and the public hearing was held on 2 February.

The government has taken the feedback from all these discussions into account and is agreeing to the review and to consult further on the reporting compliance framework. I can foreshadow that there are a number of opposition amendments which will have the effect of maintaining the annual reporting obligation that it has been the government's view was unnecessary—it was an unnecessary expense and did not add anything to the delivery of captioning. But, in the interest of ensuring the passage of the bill, which has so many other good points, the government is happy to agree to those opposition amendments.

We have to be very clear minded in looking at a lot of regulation. There is a lot of regulation that may well be well motivated but is nonetheless not necessary in order to achieve its objectives. Any regulation that is not absolutely necessary to achieve worthwhile objectives is just imposing a cost on industry that in these challenging times, particularly in the media sector, it can ill afford. So I hope that we will be able, as I said earlier, to come back to this in due course. But there are so many other good things in the bill that I think it is worth getting this legislation through the parliament.

I just note that the 18th report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights suggests that the proposed automatic exemption from captioning obligations for new subscription television channels may be incompatible with the right to equality and nondiscrimination. The government takes its international obligations very seriously. However, with respect to the committee's conclusion, we do not agree that the amendment is inconsistent with Australia's human rights obligations.

The reality is that channels which qualify for the automatic exemption would have qualified for an exemption under existing provisions, following the completion of an intensive application, consultation and consideration process by the channel and the ACMA. All this amendment does is save the broadcaster and the regulator unnecessary compliance costs without changing the result, which is very much consistent with the government's deregulation. What we are seeking to do here and in many other contexts is to cut back on the red tape—cut back, if you like, on excessive form—while preserving the substance of good policy.

I thank honourable members for their contribution, and I call on all members to support the bill.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.