Senator JOHNSTON (Western Australia) (13:39): The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Digital Television) Bill 2012 is a very important piece of legislation, particularly for regional viewers of television. This bill amends the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to improve the regulatory framework for digital television services. This includes facilitating, in particular circumstances, earlier access to the digital commercial satellite television services—known as Viewer Access Satellite Television, or VAST—licensed under section 38C of the Broadcasting Services Act in areas where it is considered that viewers will not be able to receive adequate reception of all of the applicable terrestrial digital commercial television services at the time of digital switchover. The bill also allows for retransmission services provided digitally by third parties who represent commercial television broadcasting licensees to be taken into account by a scheme administrator, when administering a conditional access scheme for the Viewer Access Satellite Television services, and by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, when it makes a declaration that an area is service deficient. I will comment later about how that structure has been working up to this point in time. My regional colleagues Barry Haase and Nola Marino tell me that it has been working very poorly and that ad hoc, unexplained decisions are being made when people seek to access the VAST services and are refused. The bill seeks to enable VAST licensees to provide their digital commercial television satellite services to specified external territories of Australia. Additionally, it seeks to allow licensees in the Remote Central and Eastern Australia terrestrial licence areas to nominate multiple places in their licence area by which their compliance with time based broadcasting obligations will be assessed. That means those licensees can accommodate different input feeds from the VAST services for their terrestrial transmitters in different parts of their licence area. The bill also seeks to provide the minister with greater flexibility to vary the timing of a simulcast period relating to a metropolitan or regional licence area, so that the variation may be more than three months earlier or later than the period originally specified, provided the date determined as the end of the simulcast period is before 31 December 2013—the date for change over. Lastly, the bill provides the minister with greater flexibility to vary the timing of when a local market area becomes a digital-only local market area, so that the variation may be more than three months earlier or later than the time originally specified. These are important pieces of flexibility, because people, particularly older Australians, do not keep up with the state of statutory law and the state of technology. Many risk having their television simply not function, unless they are made aware of what is coming over the horizon with respect to digital television. The most interesting thing that I want to discuss, apart from the regional impact of the administration of the VAST services framework, is the question of what is so good about digital television. There have been a number of inquiries into this. The Australian Broadcasting Authority's Digital Television Specialist Group said: [Over the air] television broadcasting is a demanding engineering challenge. The signals are subject to reflection from and obstruction by buildings and the terrain features. They are subject to interference from sources of electrical noise (e.g. motor vehicle ignition, overhead power lines, electric traction systems, florescent lamps, fax machines and digital mobile telephones and other transmissions). They are also subject to fluctuations in signal strength as they pass through the atmosphere. The important part about digital television is that it seeks to mitigate those engineering and technical problems, and it achieves a lot of success in doing that. Many viewers will have experienced TV reception problems such as ghosting, snowy pictures and interference. These are all difficult for viewers in particular locations to overcome. By its very nature, digital television will have a dramatic effect on these problems. Digital provides a significantly enhanced capacity for quality of picture in televisions in contrast with the analog system. One method that has been used to improve the situation has been the provision of translator services to repeat broadcast signals into hidden or black-spot areas. These are limited by cost and available radio frequency spectrum. Spectrum and bandwidth are very important considerations right around Australia when you have, particularly, commercial and industrial users using high data rates and particularly large bytes of data and bandwidth to transmit important information. Even state governments, in hospitals and education, use a lot of data in their broadcasts, particularly with video. These are limited by cost and available radiofrequency spectrum, as all repeated services need to be broadcast on separate channels—I am talking about the analog system. Digital television allows for the use of a single-frequency network, which could potentially allow all the translators within each service area to use the same frequency, freeing up large amounts of spectrum and making installation of receivers easier. This is one of the principal benefits of digital television and the digital network. We are using digital data links in defence and in a whole host of areas where we are moving very large quantities of data and we want to move it securely and not take up too much bandwidth or spectrum. Broadcasts in each area will be broadcast on their own channel, as they are now, while all translator services for a given channel will form a single frequency network. SBS intends to use just a single-frequency network across a given service area, including for the main service. The effect of ghosting, caused by reception from a direct signal and a slightly delayed reflected signal, is eliminated when the receiver is successful in recognising the digital data broadcast. The European digital video broadcast system is very good at dealing with this multipath interference. Indeed, single-frequency networks are not far from deliberately causing multipath interference. The US based system is not very good at dealing with this, and it is subject to continuing debate in the United States. The broadcasting authority also said: Features such as wide screen formats and higher definition can provide a pathway for the consumer to experience the full benefits of digital transmission. We have all been familiar with formats such as higher definition and wide-format screens. The most well known of the new capabilities is high-definition television. This has been a great advent. We are all going to enjoy high-definition television broadcasts of the coming Olympic Games, and many people are indeed upgrading their services so that they can take full advantage of what we all enjoy in the nature of the Olympic Games. They provide pictures of much higher quality than conventional, formerly analog, broadcasts. It will also be possible to transmit multiple standard-definition television programs within the same bandwidth, which is a very important infrastructural consideration. Some data capacity could also be allocated to provide closed captions more effectively, which is obviously a positive benefit for those who need to see closed caption television or multiple-language soundtracks. Again, in a number of countries around the world, at the press of a button you can access through your handset an English version of an indigenous-language program, particularly in Japan, for example. Digital enables that quality. Other program related data, such as sports scores and news headlines, could also be sent in this way. We are all becoming familiar with that type of service being available on the more advanced television sets. The way that digital television is being used in Australia was quite heavily legislated by the Howard government. Purchasers of the new datacasting licences face heavy restrictions on what video content they can carry, while incumbent broadcasters have been forced to always carry the standard-definition television service, meaning that there is often insufficient space around in various places for high-definition television. The digital rollout is going to enhance our capacity to do that. As time runs out, I want to turn to what is happening with the administration of the VAST system. There are significant problems in Western Australia with that problem— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Johnston, the time allocated for this debate has now expired, so I will put the question that this bill be now read a second time. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time.