Mr HARDGRAVE (5:03 PM) —The Broadcasting Services Amendment Bill (No. 4) 1999 is all about a new broadcasting licensing regime for international broadcasting services transmitted from Australia via satellite and short wave. This is about trying to bring into being a new system which will provide opportunities to those who wish to broadcast from Australia to regions beyond Australia. The member for Kingsford-Smith has to understand a couple of things about the whole Radio Australia episode which he has just talked about. The key thing he has to understand is that the decision making regarding Radio Australia was done by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The government, rightly, looked at the debt the Labor Party left us when we came to office and, in the August 1996 budget, set about establishing a number of measures to try and repay that debt for the benefit of all Australians so that we did not have that debt around our neck for years to come. The ABC was not as affected by that budget measure to cut the deficit as were some other instrumentalities, but nevertheless it did face a slight cut.

The ABC, via their own processes, deduced from the Mansfield report's findings and inquiries that Radio Australia was something they could cut. The ABC made the decision based on the realms of possibilities before them that it was the service provided by Radio Australia that they could afford to cut back. It was the ABC, in their typical `Let's cut services, let's not cut wages for senior executives or high profile personalities' style of management and decision making, that decided Radio Australia could be cut. So much of the debate on this bill, which amends the Broadcasting Services Act, has to do with the decision making of the ABC.

The bill, amongst other things, gives power to the Minister for Foreign Affairs to actually deliberate on whether or not the kinds of broadcasts that come from Australia and the way in which they impact on other countries in our region are, in fact, in our national interests. I must say, as somebody who believes strongly in the notion of an impartial and independent ABC, that if the ABC themselves were to be involved in broadcasts in the future, for whatever reason, I would have a measure of concern that a government minister would be in a position to pull a broadcasting licence for the ABC in that regard. But I do not believe any minister would use such powers lightly. I do not believe that they would find everyday excuses for the use of such powers. I believe that those who get a licence to broadcast would be very mindful of the responsibilities—not just the right to transmit—that come with that transmission.

The other thing that the member for Kingsford-Smith does not fully understand, despite his hiding behind a finding from some Senate committee, is that it is the Shepparton transmitter of Radio Australia which comes into so many of the regions that he expressed concern about. I know that during the Timor crisis 12 months ago those opposite brought a motion before this place condemning the government—even though it was the ABC—for cutting Radio Australia and making it impossible for people in Timor to know what was occurring. At that time I made the point that I wish to make now—that is, it was the Shepparton transmitter that is still broadcasting into that region. The nature of short wave is that it needs to bounce a long way up above this earth, and off a particular layer of our atmosphere, and bounce back down. To suggest that Cox Peninsula plays a crucial role in that Indonesian archipelago or in the countries in and around it is to misunderstand the technical operations of short wave. The member for Kingsford-Smith is simply trying to perpetuate a myth that has long since worn very thin and really has no bearing at all on the matters before us today.

Under the new licensing regime contained in the legislation before us, television broadcasts from Australia will also be covered. I had the opportunity some time ago to see how the Australia Television International operation works. Programs from various channels across a range of Australian entertainment are retransmitted by Australia Television to countries to our north. When I visited Taiwan about 3½ years ago, I was astonished to see a match that had started that afternoon between the Broncos and perhaps Illawarra.

Dr Martin —That was in the good old days when we had a team.

Mr HARDGRAVE —I see the member for Cunningham in the chamber. They were the good old days. I remember the match at the QEII Stadium in the heart of the Moreton electorate started as my plane took off and was replayed that night in Taipei. The fact that Australia Television worked so effectively showed me just how close the Republic of China on Taiwan and Australia are as nations. That service was being run by the ABC at that stage. As a result of the ABC walking away from that service, Channel 7 took up the contract, if you like, and have continued to provide that service, although I think there is probably some cloud over that horizon at the moment.

I think it is fair to say that, if Radio Australia is not meeting its foreign affairs potential, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade may like to fund it themselves. Before the advisers or the minister, if he is watching, have apoplexy over that notion, I think it is a fair comment to make. It is not just simply the responsibility of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's budget to meet the cost of providing services outside Australia. After all, one would suspect that the ABC's primary role is to provide a service to Australians who are within our territorial boundaries. I would also note that there would be great difficulty because the ABC's charter prevents outside funding. So there would be a difficulty in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade actually kicking some money into the tin to keep the ABC's role in Radio Australia pumped up to the level that the member for Kingsford-Smith seems to want and expects but forgets that it is not possible to do because of the parlous situation the budget was left in by the government of which he was such a senior member. This bill opens up the door to a whole pile of other possibilities such as new entrepreneurs and people who believe they have an agenda that is consistent with Australia's national interest and also provides a service to others outside our borders. I welcome this bill because, if one thing is for sure, it provides some clarity about the importance of these sorts of linkages with other countries and, at the same time, about the ABC's own role in these matters.

The only thing I have left to say about this legislation is my ongoing concern about the capacity of the Australian Broadcasting Authority to administer much, let alone this particular new task, that has been allotted to it. The Australian Broadcasting Authority has completely failed in properly managing local area plans for those who wish to transmit within Australia. Now we are giving them a set of responsibilities to handle matters outside Australia. I fear that the one bit of weakness in any legislation involving the ABA is that body's inability to meet the challenges that are before them. I note, with one exception, that they have a new board. It is a pity the chairman himself did not go. I think the ABA has got a lot of challenges ahead of it to meet all the expectations this government has piled upon it.

I would like to spend a little time addressing the role of the ABC, as the member for Kingsford-Smith did. I am greatly concerned about the ABC's now stated plans to yet again cut services. The ABC, every time it finds itself short on money, does everything it can to protect its little nest in Sydney, in the Ultimo Centre, and the `me-too' mentality of Melbourne which demands that it must have something that Sydney has. They will happily not hire 10 journos in regional Australia to keep one Kerry O'Brien, for instance. It strikes me as a matter of great concern that the ABC's decision making continues to miss one key point, and that is that it is a service provider. It is there to provide information, entertainment and linkages for all Australians, not just simply to provide alternative programming or quality programming—which does not seem to attract a quantity of audiences. It should no longer be an organisation that is run by the staff for the staff, as was observed by former Labor senator Graham Richardson on the Today program on Saturday morning. Graham Richardson also said on Saturday morning—quite rightly—that the ABC staff and the ABC style of programming and management should not be immune from the same cutbacks and the same changes of circumstances that have confronted the commercial media operations in Australia.

The ABC rightly has to look inside itself and lose the librarian analogy that a library is a great place to work if only people would stop borrowing books. The ABC has to realise that it should be back in the business of providing a service. The ABC has to look at the services it is no longer providing. The ABC has to look very closely at not cutting services in the BAPH states—the acronym for Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart. When I worked at the ABC 13 years ago, we used to call them the PHAB states—Perth, Hobart, Adelaide and Brisbane—because we were trying to counter that Sydney BAPH state mentality that the BAPH states can give up something because, first, we have got to protect Sydney. The ABC has to get back into rural and regional Australia the way it used to be. The ABC has to get back into the BAPH states the way it used to be. And if the ABC has to trash one Kerry O'Brien—who, if he is so good, will get a job on commercial television tomorrow—if they have to lose him to hire 10 journos, then I think that would be a step forward.

As I said, I am greatly concerned about the background to this bill. In part it comes really from the heart of ABC decision making a few years ago. I believe that the ABC has to look very strongly inside itself and that the so-called professionals within the organisation have to get real, connect themselves with the real world and provide a range of programming that suits most Australians as well as that range of programming which suits a minority of Australians, which it does, and does very effectively. The ABC has to understand that people realise that the Nine Network can run with half the budget and get four times as many viewers as the ABC does. Those sorts of pressures on the taxpayer and on governments of all persuasions have to be well understood by ABC staff. It is worth putting on the national record here that former Senator Richardson understands that now, after he has left service to Australia in the parliament; he expressed it well last Saturday morning on the Today show.

I worked for the ABC in 1987. I worked for the 7.30 Report. I was a journalist on that program working with Quentin Dempster and Ian Henschke, two people who have been staff representatives on the ABC board over the last few years. Greg Turnbull, who works for opposition leader Kim Beazley, was three desks away from me. I worked for the ABC in 1987. I was only there for 10 months, so I do not pretend to understand it in a completely intimate way, but let me tell the House why I left the ABC. In November 1987, ABC staff in the drama department were demanding from management—and threatening strike action if they did not get it—the 7.30 time slot on Monday to Friday for drama. There was no certainty that the 7.30 Report would continue.

There would be uncharitable souls around Australia who probably wish that had occurred—that the 7.30 Report had died in 1987. Nevertheless, it continues on, 13 years later. The point I want to make is that again there was no certainty from a management point of view. The host of the program, Andrew Carroll, left the show at the same time as I did. There was no certainty about the future of the 7.30 Report in 1987. In fact, in that year four senior journalists left the program from the Brisbane office. What ultimately happened, half-a-dozen years later when it became a network program out of Sydney, was what we feared was going to occur. The key thing was that it was the staff in the drama department taking on the staff in the current affairs unit for that particular programming time slot.

That is no way to run an organisation that is meant to be a public broadcaster. The ABC must realise that it has an important role in the fabric of Australia to provide a range of services and information and that range of access that so many people romance. It is important that we have an ABC that is responsive to the demands of average Australians. Consider as an alternate the BBC, which runs the BBC World Service, which runs the sort of service that is outlined and described here in this bill. The ABC does not measure up to even be considered in the same conversation. The BBC is funded by radio and television licences, but the BBC also conducts a series of public consultations every year. The BBC goes around and asks people what it is they expect of their BBC. Each year, it uses that as an accountability measure so that at the end of the year it can say it has delivered. The BBC discovers what people expect from program content, program standards and program quality. I am sure no-one would argue that things have declined as far as the BBC is concerned.

Interestingly, the BBC understands more about social issues, social attitudes and people's standards on the use of expletives and sex in drama than the ABC do. It is worth noting that the ABC are not covered by the same standards and rules that commercial broadcasters must face up to. The ABC are able to broadcast four-letter words without any recompense to any authority in this country, because of their often stated independence. They believe it would be an encroachment upon that independence if anybody pulled them up on this. Essentially Caesar judges Caesar within the ABC.

Essentially the ABC is a completely hands-off organisation. Those opposite suggest that it was the government that shut down Radio Australia, an adjunct of the ABC. Of course, as I have outlined, they completely miss several important points that uncover the truth. The ABC made all of those decisions themselves. I should also say on the record that the ABC do have mechanisms for public consultation, although they do not use them. I refer honourable members to the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and the Arts from its inquiry into radio racing services and the ABC's decision to end those services. Without any consultation, broadly, they decided to cut those radio racing services. The ABC said it was because no-one was listening to them. But the House of Representatives committee, chaired by the member for Hinkler, who will also contribute to this debate, found that more people were listening to radio racing services than to many Radio National programs. The ABC did not take the opportunity to consult the people and find out whether or not their decision was satisfactory as a measure of taxpayer listener concerns. They just completely ignored the viewer and the listener.

We have now reached the point where we are opening up a set of possibilities for others to fill a gap which the member for Kingsford-Smith identifies as having been created by the ABC's decision to cut Radio Australia's services. I suspect that, all in all, the gap will be filled by something that is far more responsive to average Australians' views, needs and concerns and therefore far more responsive to Australia's interests in our region. Whilst some opposite seem to be making a big deal about those who may be using Cox Peninsula, being a Christian broadcaster, and broadcasting into West Papua and other places, they seem to miss the point that there are many Christian people through those areas. In a lot of Asian countries, 15 or 20 per cent are Christians who have been in contact with missionaries and who uphold strong Christian values.

Trying to portray that a Christian based broadcaster out of Australia into our broad region has some mischievous nature misses the point. It also shows great disregard for the strength of feeling of the largest Islamic nation in the world, Indonesia, and the people there who with their strong faith are not going to be influenced by the broadcasts that come out of Cox Peninsula, and were never meant to be. The range of views and the range of services, in keeping with Australia's interests in the region, will be far better served by what is about to come than has been in the past. It is a great pity that those opposite do not understand the total dishonesty in their debate in trying to blame the government for the ABC's own poor decision making in this matter.