HANSARD EXTRACT
|
Communications, Information Technology and the Arts
Committee Report |
| 13 February 2006 |
Mr HAYES
(Werriwa) (4.21 p.m.)—It
was 1957 that television was first introduced in this country. The
reruns show Bruce Gyngell hosting the initial broadcast. Unlike many
on the committee, Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins, possibly including you,
I actually do remember TV at its earliest stage. As a young boy I
remember sitting outside the HMV shop waiting for my first sight of
Disneyland and seeing Annette Funicello on the Mickey Mouse Club.
All these things for a boy living in Dulwich Hill in Sydney were
absolutely amazing. Television, when it first came, was very much a
luxury item. It was something that we living in a working-class
suburb could only go to the shop to see. A lot of the kids growing
up in that suburb spent a lot of time at that shop. It might have
been a forerunner for childminding centres; I am not quite sure.
Quite frankly, we grew up thinking that television was for rich
kids.
But, over time, obviously TV became something
else. TV has become integral to modern communications. It is part of
what keeps people in touch in local communities, and regional
communities in particular, and has augmented radio services and
provided international news et cetera. Since its introduction, TV
has lost its mantle of being a luxury item to the point where most
people consider it reasonably essential in the modern family. No
longer an item which is simply there for entertainment, it is now
essential to modern communication and meeting the demands of a
pretty diverse community, enhanced when we moved to broaden that
diversity with the establishment of the SBS.
Television as we know it really has brought the
world to our living room. I think against that backdrop we are now
entering into a new era of television. This is a significant change.
When television changed from black and white to colour that, if
anything, simply enhanced the image and perhaps the enjoyability of
watching golf, cricket and a few other things I tend to watch. But,
in terms of making a fundamental change to the delivery pattern of
television, digital television has certainly established a new
platform for delivery. Digital television will provide not only an
enhanced communication medium, pristine imaging, CD quality sound
and the prospect of further enhanced contact but also something we
would have only dreamed of years ago: the prospect of interactive
participation in programming. These changes are so monumental that
they are certainly more significant than when we moved from black
and white to colour.
The Standing Committee on Communications,
Information Technology and the Arts, in its efforts to discharge its
responsibility and report on its terms of reference, worked
particularly well. It had something like 97 separate submissions, 11
public hearings and 46 different witnesses. As a consequence, we
produced 12 unanimous recommendations in our report Digital
television: who’s buying it? Being a relatively new member of
this parliament, I am not quite sure how many times you get reports
of such magnitude with the committee arriving at 12 unanimous
recommendations, but that is what occurred on this occasion. I think
the goodwill that operated in this committee applied itself in a way
that was good not only for those in the radio and television
community that appeared before it but also for the consumers of
television. It was good that we could have an objective view of what
was being put before us by largely competing forces.
There are two recommendations I would
particularly like to rely on, as my friend has ably covered others
in his report, which I listened to. I would like to comment on the
content and quality aspects and particularly recommendation 3, which
applies to our national broadcasters—the ABC and SBS. To date, both
of those are subject to genre restrictions. There is a prohibition
imposed under the Broadcasting Services Act as to what the ABC and
SBS can transmit on their two multichannel stations—for instance,
ABC2. This is not an argument as to whether there should be separate
radio stations for the ABC; they have already clearly established
them. Our recommendation went to freeing them from the restriction
prohibiting them from carrying certain content on ABC2 and the
second SBS station.
The reason for that was not necessarily simply
to argue a case in relation to the ABC, because, I dare say, they
are adequately equipped for negotiating with the government on that
on their own behalf. But it seemed to us as a committee that denying
content to those public broadcasters with access to a
multichannelled facility is doing nothing to drive the take-up of
digital television. Hence, it was a unanimous recommendation of the
committee that it should be freed up. Quite frankly, if anything,
those second stations should be seen as an attraction of what
digital television offers and as assisting the take-up rate of
digital television in this country.
The consequence of not doing so is this. It
simply means that we prevent the ABC from utilising much of its
existing archival material or from time-shifting material from the
main station. We prevent the ABC from exploiting its strengths,
particularly in relation to current affairs and news. Restriction of
the scope for multichannelling also undermines the benefits to
audiences of digital television: namely, the provision of greater
choice through diversity of programs and services. Our
recommendation is that that should be freed up no later than 1
January next year and that its freeing up should be at least
considered, in light of our recommendations, as soon as possible.
Having said that, I think it is incumbent on me
to say that, if we are going to free that up with a view to acting
positively to attract a television audience to a multichannel
station, it is necessary that there should be not only a lifting of
genre restrictions but also adequate funding put in place to ensure
that our national broadcasters can fully exploit the potential of
digital television technology in terms of innovative programming and
interactive services. We are aware that the ABC’s and the SBS’s
triennial funding is coming up for review, and we would strongly
urge the government to take this into account when setting the
broadcasters’ budget for the next three-year period. As the report
indicates, the position of digital television is very strong in this
country but we must do more to enhance its pick-up rate. (Time
expired)
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