Fletcher, Paul, MP

Mr FLETCHER (Bradfield) (17:34): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013 and the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill. Deputy Speaker Lyons, as you are well aware, these two bills form part of the rushed package of so-called media reforms being pursued by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Although the minister has told us that he would not negotiate on the terms of his package, what we are now doing is debating two of those six bills, principally on the basis that they are what might be described as the less egregious part of a package which is overall very much an egregious, offensive and indefensible complex of measures. These two bills form a reasonably sensible but far from perfect part of the overall package. What we have seen in what has been introduced by the minister in a furious rush since last Tuesday, when it first saw the light of public scrutiny, is a package which is deeply flawed in substance and which is just as deeply flawed in process. And it is no surprise that members of this House—both on this side and on the crossbenches—have spoken out very strongly about how flawed the process is. Even more importantly perhaps, industry participants across almost the entire broadcasting and media industry have highlighted this extremely flawed process. The particular two bills that the parliament is debating this afternoon are, as I said, the relatively more sensible part of this package. Nevertheless, they still stand out as dealing with at least two areas where we have seen grossly incompetent behaviour from this minister. The first is the reduction in licence fees paid by television broadcasters—an episode which was first seen in 2010, and which we are now seeing a repeat of. The second is the botched process for allocating the right to be Australia's international broadcaster. Both of these inglorious episodes of public policy are dealt with in this bill. In essence, it seems that the minister is trying to cover over some of his past mistakes. In the brief time I have today, therefore, I want to make just three points in relation to the bills that the House is considering this afternoon. Firstly, I want to expand on the proposition that, as a public policy process, what we have seen has been utterly shambolic and completely contemptuous of the parliament and of the Australian people and, in particular, of the thousands of people who work in the media and communications sector, the future of whose companies depends upon the rules being made here. Secondly, I want to make the point that the approach taken in these bills in relation to the reduction in television broadcasting licence fees is better than the approach taken by the minister in 2010 but still raises some significant questions. There has not been time to properly consider these questions. Thirdly, I want to make the point that the proposed new section 31AA, which would have the effect, if it passed into law, that only the ABC would be permitted to provide Australia's international broadcasting service, is a fundamentally bad piece of policy which we on this side of the chamber object to. Let me start with the proposition that, as a public policy process, what we have seen here from the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in relation to his so-called media reforms has been absolutely horrible. Supposedly, what we are considering before the parliament this afternoon is a package developed in response to the convergence review, conducted in 2011, and the Finkelstein inquiry into media regulation, conducted in 2012. Despite the fact that it has been nearly two years since the convergence review reported, the detailed statutory provisions that were proposed to be passed by the parliament only saw the light of public visibility last week. Ludicrously, the minister is proposing that the parliament should pass this entire package of six bills by the end of this week, not just the House of Representatives but the Senate as well. It is an indefensible proposition to seek to argue that this is in any way a sensible, respectable and appropriate public policy process. It plainly is not. It is the very opposite of what one would hope to see, which is a measured and steady process of public policy development; critically, a process which includes extensive consultation with stakeholders. That is what one would expect to see. That is the very opposite of what we are seeing. The minister has said several times over the last week and a bit that it has been known for a couple of years that he was wanting to make major reforms in this area. That is no answer to the criticism that this has been a truly horrible public process, because a knowledge of a generalised desire on the part of the minister to make changes is one thing; the chance to read, analyse and respond to the detailed statutory provisions is quite the opposite. What the minister is proposing is that the parliament, as well as the affected industries, should have only a few short days to consider many, many pages of detailed legislative provisions which are central to the very operation of major industries: the television industry, the newspaper industry and other associated industries. These are industries which employ thousands of people and provide news, entertainment, information and other services to millions of Australians. It is a scandalous and indefensible proposition that this is in any way a process which is appropriate or can be justified. Not only has the minister treated the parliament with contempt; it seems he has even been prepared to treat his cabinet colleagues with contempt, because a package of this scale and complexity was considered by cabinet without the papers even being available before the cabinet meeting commenced and with no coordinating comments from other departments, it is reliably reported. What a scandalous way to deal with an important area of public policy. The minister has sought to impose a ludicrous deadline where the entire package should be considered and voted on by both chambers of the parliament by this Thursday. It is really almost indescribable what an abomination of a public policy process this is. It is no surprise, therefore, that leading figures in the affected industries have been very, very critical of the process. Mr Kerry Stokes, Chairman of Seven West Media, said: 'I can only recall legislation being pushed in this haste in the wake of 9/11. My submission is you shouldn't be doing any of this.' The CEO of Fairfax Media, Greg Hywood, said, 'To be plain, the impression, voiced almost universally over the weekend, is that the process is at least unseemingly rushed and the bills mirror that state of affairs.' I want to make the point that in criticising the process I am not making a partisan comment; I am making a comment about public administration. The best piece of evidence I can offer to demonstrate that this is not a partisan comment is to look at what happened when then Minister for Transport and Communications, Kim Beazley, introduced the Broadcasting Services Act in 1991 and 1992. I have no hesitation in saying that Kim Beazley can properly be regarded as one of the giants of the communications sector in Australia. When you look back at the history of the way he dealt with the Broadcasting Services Act, what you see is an exemplary process, a process that is very different to the one being conducted by the present minister, who could more appropriately be described as one of the pygmies of the communications sector. On 7 November 1991, the then Minister for Transport and Communications gave a statement on the exposure draft of the Broadcasting Services Bill, and I emphasise 'on the exposure draft'. He was putting out a detailed draft of the legislative provisions. He had this to say: As I mentioned earlier, the Bill is not the Government's final position on the new legislation, but an exposure draft intended to facilitate community consideration of the issues. A widespread process of consultation will be undertaken over the next three months on several fronts: I intend to make myself available to speak at a number of major conferences on issues arising out of the review of broadcasting and to receive the views of any interested parties who want to make a submission He goes on to say that senior departmental officials will be available, his department has established a process to receive requests for the relevant documents and the caucus subcommittee will be initiating widespread community consultation. That is a good process of consultation. What we have seen with the package of bills being put forward by the present minister is an appalling process. The second issue I want to raise is the reduction in licence fees for commercial television broadcasters. The level of licence fees is always a contentious issue. Understandably enough, the television broadcasters would like the licence fees to be as low as possible. On the other hand, the parliament of Australia must be conscious that the government, through the parliament and through the agencies of government, granted the television broadcasters a scarce and valuable right to use spectrum—a limited public resource—so granting them in effect the right to participate in an oligopoly protected by statute. That is a very valuable economic privilege. No doubt it will be pointed out by the television industry that it is less valuable than it once was, given the well understood difficulties their businesses are facing with competition from the internet, but it does remain a valuable economic privilege granted by the parliament on behalf of the people of Australia. The parliament has seen fit over the years to extract from the broadcasters in return certain commitments, particularly commitments to carry Australian content. Those are very important commitments and people have for many years made the point about the cultural and national identity significance of Australian television carrying many hours of Australian programming; at the same time, as we all know, it costs more to produce an hour of Australian television programming than it costs to buy an hour of American or other foreign programming, so you have some conflicting principles at work here. The key point is that in this legislation the minister has proposed to entrench permanently a material reduction in the broadcasting licence fees. This is an area where the minister has form, because in 2010, with very little notice, he granted the industry a substantial reduction in fees—a 33 per cent reduction in 2010 and a 50 per cent reduction in 2011. The reduction totalled over $200 million across all licensees, yet the minister did not bother to get any commitments in return. You would have thought that an obvious commitment to obtain would be one in relation to increases in Australian content—some demonstration that in exchange for the significant economic relief the broadcasters were receiving there were some additional public policy benefits. The question for present purposes is whether the benefit the minister purports to have obtained on this occasion is sufficient to justify the substantial reduction in licence fees being offered as part of this legislation. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, because of the haste with which this package is being rammed through, it is difficult to make an informed assessment of that important public policy issue. I turn thirdly to proposed section 31AAA, which would have the effect of permitting only the ABC to provide Australia's international broadcasting service. This is another example of the minister using this bill to backfill the gaping holes left by his woefully incompetent carriage of public policy in this area, particularly in this case the flawed process by which the right to provide Australia's international broadcasting service, and of course to receive substantial payment from the Australian government for doing so, was to be allocated through a competitive process. Not once but twice that process led to the relevant officials recommending that Sky should be chosen to carry out the task and not once but twice this government interfered to say no, they wanted the ABC to do it. Now it seems they want to entrench that in legislation. There can be no good basis for doing so when all they are doing is removing competitive tension next time we come to have a tender. This is the less flawed part of a terribly flawed package—and it certainly has plenty of flaws.