Neville, Paul, MP

Mr NEVILLE (Hinkler—The Nationals Deputy Whip) (18:14): I too rise today to speak on the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013 and the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 2013. As honourable members are aware, these are part of a package of six bills, others of which we will debate, I assume, tonight or tomorrow—that is, if the minister does not pull them in the meantime. In all my time in this parliament, one of the things I have tried to associate myself with since I came into this place has been the media—print media and electronic media. I take some pride in the fact that it was my concern, especially for regional Australia, that saw the improvement in the cross-media laws in such a way that we did not end up with unfettered media barons throughout this country, but at the same time we freed up, through the two-out-of-three rule, an opportunity for media companies to develop some scale. I will touch briefly later on the 75 per cent rule, which is now the subject of a special joint select committee looking into whether that should be lifted or not. Having said that and also having been associated with new rules for radio, I saw a lot of parallels with this rushed treatment of television. We certainly had a lot of time to consider the cross-media laws when they came in and a goodly amount of time to consider alterations to regional radio. When we did that, however, there was an element of rush towards the end in trying to tidy up a few downstream effects, which I think has not served regional radio well since—and I am the first to admit that. Having been through that process, I saw the minister's attitude over the last fortnight, especially his bringing these six bills in and telling us last week that, if they were not completed by this Thursday, he might wipe the lot of them and that we could take it from him that there would be no bartering. I would have thought that for the media of this country—and particularly, as we are now talking about television, the electronic media—at a time when it is going into a whole new phase of new applications that are going to revolutionise the way we do business and the way we are entertained by electronic media, the government would be looking around to get the very best laws in place. It would be picking the brains of external experts. It would be picking the brains of the opposition—dare I say it, the shadow minister at the table, who himself, both as a lawyer and as an operator, has been associated with the media. He has himself conducted inquiries into the media—namely, into Channel 10. When we have that sort of expertise in the parliament and we are looking at the landscape of broadcasting over perhaps the next 10 or 15 years, a respectful and bipartisan approach might have had a lot to commend it and might have provided us with one of the best systems of electronic media in the world. But, no, we were rushed into this process. The speakers list for today was only being drawn up in the middle of the day, which in itself is quite bewildering. This idea that it had to be rushed through brought an extraordinary backlash from right across the Australian media. It is a long time since we have had the head of News Ltd, the head of Channel 9, the head of Channel 7 and the new head of Channel 10 all in town at the one time. It is not because they are just watching their own corners but rather that they are appalled at the indecent haste and the amateurish way that this whole package was put together. Some of the measures that the minister was proposing were quite reasonable, but he packaged them up with six measures, and some of them are not reasonable. They are not even vaguely reasonable. I will just deal briefly with the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 2013. That proposes to take the licence fees for commercial television operators down to 50 per cent, or 4.5 per cent of revenue. As the previous speaker said, that has been a progressive thing that has gone on in the last three years: 33 per cent, 50 and 50. It is strange that such a generous reduction, which comes to about $140 million, against the background of the other things that the minister is proposing, has got the proprietors of the major television networks almost ambivalent as to whether they would like to accept it or not if the price of doing that is some of the scuttlebutt that the minister wants to impose on them. You really have to ask yourself questions when, as I said, the heads of these networks are questioning whether it is worthwhile accepting this package and when you see some of the other things that the minister proposes, not least of which will be about the freedom of the press, which we will deal with separately in another debate. Some of the things in the current bill arise out of the minister's 2012 Convergence Review. That review talked about the 50 per cent licence fee rebate; content requirements, especially around the multichannels, because, as you know, each television station now has at least three channels—the ABC has five; and the 55 per cent local content requirement for the operators' primary channels. It also proposed that there be no fourth channel. There is a bit of a push around Australia for a fourth channel. I do not think, in the current economic conditions, that would be wise—also given the upheaval the media industry is going through. One of the things which came out in evidence at the inquiry into the possibility of lifting the 75 per cent reach rule was that there is a struggle on at present to maintain two regional news services in country Australia—two services from the three groups of channels. If there is a problem there now with three, how much worse could it become with four? Could we end up, should that fourth channel be extended into regional Australia as well, having not four channels but, by virtue of the amount of revenue available, only two? In that respect, I think the minister not accepting a fourth channel was probably a good move. Coming out of the Convergence Review, we also looked at things like changes to SBS to do with streaming, catch-up, texting and so on. I think that was also appropriate. We also looked, under the Special Broadcasting Services Act, at introducing an Indigenous non-executive director to the SBS board. I think that is appropriate too, especially given the emphasis that one particular SBS channel now has on Indigenous affairs. That is a sensible measure. But the measure which I think bewilders all coalition members is the attempt to enshrine in legislation that the ABC can be the one and only tenderer for the Australia Network services. As honourable members will know, the Australia Network is our face to the world. I am a great supporter of the ABC and I am sure, over the time the ABC has been doing this work and judiciously buying programs from the other networks, that that has served us well. But I do not think you can say that that is the only way we can do it. The fact that it took the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy nearly a year to dodge and weave around the tender process and then, despite another operator clearly winning it, award it to the ABC—that made no sense to me. This takes that inefficiency and that prejudice—whether it be the minister's or the government's—another step. If this were to pass, it would enshrine it so that no-one except the ABC can ever provide the service. I think that is an insult to our commercial broadcasters and, in a way, I do not think it does the ABC itself any favours. The 75 per cent reach rule is, as I said, the subject of a separate inquiry. No doubt we will get a chance to speak about that later, but I will touch on it briefly now. It is a matter of contention among the commercial TV operators. Some favour it; some do not. Some point out that it would have a number of unintended consequences, one of which, on the evidence of Kerry Stokes, would be to give him an unfair advantage in the west. Another consequence would be that it would require the rescrambling of the South Australian market. That is not to say that these things are insurmountable. They are not. But to rush this through in four days and to try to plumb all those potential unintended consequences is almost impossible. The minister's push to do this would have left us with an absolute hotchpotch of measures. If the 75 per cent reach rule change had gone through in the form being proposed, we could have ended up with a very difficult situation. Another unintended consequence would be whether or not—and I touched on this earlier in my address—there would be enough financial gravitas in the regional markets to sustain three sets of commercial regional news services. That is something which country Australia would like, but when it does happen we want it to be sustainable. Those are my views. There are some good measures there; there are others which are just plainly silly. But the way they have been presented to this parliament is nothing short of a disgrace.