Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Minister for Agriculture and Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (14:49): These changes are all about making sure rural and regional Australia's interests are better represented in the ABC's governance structures. It's important to have a metric (1) to make sure that changes are implemented in a timely way, and (2) to make sure rural and regional voices are heard and listened to in ABC management decisions. The bill will introduce a number of additional annual reporting obligations to the ABC, because I find that if you are actually going to have to report something publicly it will help you focus the mind on the impact of your decisions. The ABC will have to provide statistics on the number of people employed in regional and metropolitan areas. These will include details on the number of journalists employed in regional areas as well as the total number of hours of local or regional news bulletins broadcast each year. This is incredibly important for transparency. The ABC is an important news and entertainment service to our community, and we want to make sure that continues.