Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens support the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Radio) Bill 2015 for much the same reasons that Senator Gallagher has just outlined. In fact, the Greens had agreed to let this bill go through in non-contro so it is interesting to see at sneaking into government business. Nonetheless, it is a sensible bill. It is housekeeping but it does underline the importance of digital radio broadcasts in the Australian market. I did want to take the opportunity while we are here to underline—as I have done over quite a number of times going back years under several different governments—the importance of the community radio sector and community radio broadcasters in particular. It is good that Senator Fifield is here for the debate because this is a pretty serious fight really that can actually be avoided or a disaster that can be avoided. There is a certain feeling of Groundhog Day here because I have gone through this process and probably delivered a nearly identical speech when Senator Stephen Conroy was the communications minister. The situation was eventually fixed, as I suggest Senator Fifield is going to be able to do is well.

It relates to the DRP, a three-letter acronym that stands for the Digital Radio Program, which supports community radio broadcasters to actually stay in the mix as the sector transmissions across to digital. Nobody is suggesting the analogue radio broadcast services are about to be ripped out from under them. This is a pretty slow burn. It is very different to the way the TV broadcasters switched over. Nonetheless, digital transmitters are becoming much more prevalent as are, much more importantly, receivers.

As cars get upgraded to play digital radio and people invest in digital radio handsets in their homes and businesses, it is essential that our community radio stations around the country are there at the outset and are not playing catch up, are not traipsing along after people have already found their favourite stations or worse that they are simply blacked out and are not there when people switch over to digital radio spectrums. We must ensure that the community broadcasters are in their rightful place alongside the commercial radio broadcasters, the ABC and the SBS. I hope that this proposition is non-controversial—that they belong there and that they perform an immensely valuable public service. They are, in fact, a key component of media diversity.

From rumours and reporting, this is a debate that is about to be reignited again—I have not seen any formal announcements yet—that the government is actually going to rip open the debate again about media ownership and media concentration in this country. What more important role could community broadcasters play at this time? When we talk about media diversity, that is whom we are talking about: independent voices, non-English-speaking backgrounds, people with a diversity of political views, people coming from a variety of different cultural perspectives on our airwaves, telling unique Australian stories that will not be heard on the big public broadcasters, ABC and SBS, and will not be heard on the commercial stations.

Here is the problem: the Digital Radio Program, the DRP, was underfunded under the previous government and it took, from recollection, more than a year to get this tiny amount of money put back into the budget. As this was a program that was started by Senator Coonan in 2005 as a broader part of the media reform packages pursued by the former Howard government, it is non-controversial. There is cross-party support in this place for supporting our valuable community broadcasters to do what they do, and so what we see here, I am assuming, is an oversight rather than malice. But what has occurred is that the indexation pause that took place in the 2014 federal budget—that unloved, friendless, hated budget that attacked nearly every corner of society and ultimately, you could argue, cost the former Prime Minister his job—which obviously hits a number of portfolios, created a gap between the costs of digital radio and the amount of public funding support that accumulates over time, and so a gap is opening up; a wedge is opening up. This happened under Senator Conroy—obviously in a different political context but with the same outcome. It forces the community broadcasters around the country into this rather appalling 'hunger games' scenario, where they are asked to decide which of them will go off the air. It is that bad. It is which stations will no longer be heard on the public airwaves.

I do not assume that that is the outcome that Senator Fifield is seeking. In fact, we have not heard from him or given him the opportunity to hear directly what the government's position is, but I am going to assume in good faith that you are not hoping, through the indexation pause from 2014, to knock community broadcasters off the air in our cities and regions. I do not think that is what you are proposing. But, as the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia has made abundantly clear, when you froze the indexation it opened up a gap. What the sector is asking for is for the 2015-16 levels to be maintained but to be indexed, so that they travel upwards at the same pace as costs travel gently upwards over time. And that means $3.686 million-plus indexation. It is not going to allow them to employ any more staff. It is not going to allow them to create new and unique creative and diverse content. It is simply going to allow them to keep the doors open and to stay on air. As the Labor Party fixed this when they were in government, when Senator Conroy was minister, in the context where the broadcasters were running a campaign on air against the government, seeking base funding to stay alive, I hope that it does not come to that again. I believe that this is an oversight rather than malice. That indexation pause needs to lift in the context of the size of the Commonwealth budget and, more importantly, the services that community broadcasters provide: services to media diversity, services in terms of training up volunteers in the next generation of broadcasters, across all those different skill sets. We need to express our support rather than just pay it lip-service—pay them the $3.8 million that they are going to need and lift that indexation pause so that they do not have to feel like they need to engage in some kind of broadcast campaign to alert their audiences to the threat that is looming and, more importantly, do not have to go campaigning behind the scenes to the Expenditure Review Committee and lobby. That is the last thing they should be doing. They should be producing great content and supporting the health of the community broadcast sector.

I hope Senator Fifield, whom I tipped off—and I tipped off his advisers over the last couple of days that I was going to bring this issue to the chamber—will have something good to say for us so that we can all stand down, get on with the process of passing this bill and let our community broadcast sector do what it does best. I thank the chamber.