Mr STEPHEN SMITH (1:23 AM) —There are 137 amendments to the government's Broadcasting Services Amendment (Digital Television and Datacasting) Bill 2000 which have been effected by the Senate. Regrettably, some of the most important amendments proposed to the Senate, which would have established a workable framework and definition of datacasting, were rejected by the Senate at the urging of the government, so the main part of this piece of legislation is the establishment of a datacasting regime. Many of the amendments go to ameliorating the worst effects of the government's restrictive regime, and time will tell whether the restrictions which the government has imposed are so restrictive that we will not see a viable new datacasting industry emerging in this country.

The second group of amendments goes to multichannelling for the ABC and SBS. I was pleased that from opposition I was able to effect 98.5 per cent of our policy to enable the ABC and SBS to multichannel. There are restrictions which the government, in its slavish devotion to content, program and genre distinctions, has required but, on the best advice of the ABC and the SBS, these enable the ABC and the SBS to effect whatever programs they currently have in mind for multichannelling. They are unable to multichannel generally in the content of sport, drama, national news and some other areas. They are, of course, able to effect these programs on their primary channels. This is a great day for the public national broadcasters, being the first of our terrestrial TV broadcasters to be authorised to, in digital format, multichannel. The review processes which have been effected by the Senate, most of those on the recommendation of the opposition, will see an orderly and early review across the range of this piece of legislation. Time will tell whether the experience and uptake of HDTV and SDTV will see the fulfilment of the framework legislation established by the parliament two years ago.

With 137 amendments in what are always, firstly, contentious public policy issues but also highly technical and detailed areas, it does require a big effort. Very many of the amendments in the end were done by agreement between the government, the opposition and the Democrats—after the government had been belted around with a baseball bat for a significant period of time to bring them to their senses, but that is by the by.

In a technical area such as this, the long parliamentary process was aided and assisted by the professional conduct not just of government officers, opposition officers and Democrat officers but also of the officers of relevant agencies and departments and officers from the various parts of the media and broadcasting industry, whether that be prospective datacasters, free-to-air commercial broadcasters, the subscription television industry or the national broadcasters. Whilst it had its moments as a parliamentary and legislative process, apart from the outcome, it was a delight.

Question resolved in the affirmative.