Senator HARRIS (9:40 AM) —I would like to raise an issue about local content and the government's obvious willingness to support that with the amendments they have brought forward with the bill. My question to Senator Kemp, who is representing the minister at the moment, is: would the government consider using the amount of money that is spent by the TV groups in providing local news in a local area to give a direct rebate off the licensing fee that that station pays to the government? I will expand on that a little further and give an example. We have Channel 10 operating out of Perth, and at present they pay an affiliation fee to Channel 10 for a 24-hour, seven days a week stream. In other words, they take the signal totally from Channel 10, stream it to Perth and run it through that area. However, to comply with the government's local content rules they then have to spend money generating local news stories within that area.

I know full well that we cannot legislate to alter a contractual arrangement between two corporate entities, but I ask the minister: if the government wants to support local content and wants that content to be derived and produced in the local area, would the government be willing to allow the cost of producing that local content to be rebated back to that company out of the licensing fees that they pay directly to the government? That obviously is a budgetary issue, and I realise that the Senate cannot move an amendment that requires a budgetary consideration, and so it would have to come from this chamber by way of a request. I am just verbally putting that on the table to the minister. It would be an enormous show of faith by the government if it were even to commit to looking at the issue. Nobody is asking the minister to make a decision on the run; I am asking whether the government, to show good faith, would consider looking at such a proposal and bringing it back to the chamber.