Hipkins Chris: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19646] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am happy to take a call on the title clause commencement clause and clause 3 of the Television New Zealand Amendment Bill. To start with the title I think we could more accurately describe this bill as the “Final Death Knell for Public Television Broadcasting in New Zealand Bill” because we know now that we do not have a public television broadcaster in New Zealand. The other day when the financial reviews were being debated by the House I had the opportunity to flick through the financial review of Television New Zealand. The organisation actually said that it did not regard itself as a public television broadcaster and it never had. In fact its primary motivation all along had been to be a commercial broadcaster. I think this bill moves us further down that line of saying that Television New Zealand is not going to be a public broadcaster; it is going to be a purely commercial organisation. So we should be totally upfront about that and say that in New Zealand we do not have a public television broadcaster. We would be one of the few OECD countries that do not have a public television service.  
We have a television service that is owned by the public but that does not necessarily make it a public television service. In fact Television New Zealand’s almost exclusive goal now is to make money. We can certainly see evidence of that in my electorate and that is one of the reasons why I argue that this bill should be called the “Final Death Knell for Public Television Broadcasting in New Zealand Bill”. My electorate is home to the Avalon television studios as long as they continue to exist which based on their current standing may not be for very much longer. In Television New Zealand’s very chequered history the Avalon Studios were constructed in the 1970s and 1980s to be the home of New Zealand television—the home of public New Zealand television and of public broadcasting in New Zealand. But one of the reasons that we should call this bill the “Final Death Knell for Public Television Broadcasting in New Zealand Bill” is that the Avalon television studios are scheduled to be closed. Television New Zealand effectively is going to abandon them. It is going to abandon all of the people who work in them. The studios will effectively end up being mothballed because the chances of Television New Zealand finding someone who is willing to buy them are relatively low. 
When I look at the Avalon Studios I think “What a waste!”. They could and should be the home of public television broadcasting in New Zealand. If we had a public television network that would be the perfect place for the network to be. It has arguably the best television studio facilities in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost everybody who has worked there or produced any television there will agree with that comment yet the studios are not being used. They are not being used because Television New Zealand is not a public broadcaster; it is more inclined to rely on cheap imported content such as reality television shows that are produced not in a studio but by giving someone a camera and telling them to follow some celebrities around for a little while. 
As a result what we see on our television screens in New Zealand does not differentiate us as a country from any other country in the world. New Zealand’s identity is not reflected by Television New Zealand any more than it is reflected by TV3 or Sky television. So the question becomes whether the Television New Zealand channels are a public television network. No I do not think they are. I do not think they are any more “New Zealand” than are TV3 or Sky television. 
In fact another reason we should call this bill the “Final Death Knell for Public Television Broadcasting in New Zealand Bill” is that Television New Zealand has now become a content provider for pay TV. It provides an entire channel for TVNZ Heartland which is available only to Sky subscribers who are willing to pay for it. So how could we possibly say that Television New Zealand is a public broadcaster when one of its channels which is made up exclusively of New Zealand content and a lot of which is funded by the taxpayer through New Zealand On Air at various points is available only to people who are willing to subscribe to Sky television. That is one of the reasons why we should call the bill the “Final Death Knell for Public Television Broadcasting in New Zealand Bill”. 
We could call the bill the “Death of Avalon TV Studios Bill” or the “Final Death of the Avalon Television Complex Bill” because one of the things this bill does is make some changes in relation to access to the New Zealand Television Archive. The television archive is currently based at Avalon beside the Avalon Studios in brand-new facilities that are less than 10 years old. One of the things the Government is proposing to do in other legislation which no doubt will come before this House is to force an amalgamation between the Television Archive and the Film Archive. Potentially that will mean that that brand-new less-than-10-year-old Television Archive facility at Avalon beside the Avalon Studios will go the same way as the Avalon Studios and be mothballed by Television New Zealand when that happens. I think that is incredibly sad.  
To continue to elaborate on the reason why I think the bill should be called the “Final Death of the Avalon Television Complex Bill” I tell the Committee that we are potentially seeing the end of Avalon the end of the studios. The tower block—that is the commercial office block—has already gone. The studios themselves are shortly to follow. 
Charles Chauvel 
: What will happen to Astar? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is right. Charles Chauvel raises a very good point. What will happen to Astar’s cooking segment on the  
Good Morning 
 show which is currently produced at Avalon? 
Charles Chauvel 
: What will the fans watch in the morning? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Charles Chauvel is very concerned about that having just been on the cooking segment of the  
Good Morning  
show. But actually all the people who work on the  
Good Morning 
 show say they cannot produce that show in its current format in the Auckland studios because those studios are not big enough. The cooking segment and the New Zealand music segment will probably disappear because the Auckland studios are not big enough for them to be produced in. Another potential name for this bill then is the “Another Kick in the Guts for New Zealand Music Bill” because the  
Good Morning 
 television show rather tragically is one of the few opportunities for a lot of New Zealand musicians to perform live on New Zealand television. They do that on the  
Good Morning  
show in the mornings. If that opportunity is taken away from them when “Television Auckland” relocates the last of its operations to Auckland and completely abandons the rest of the country as Television New Zealand has progressively done over the last 2 decades that will be yet another thing we will see the demise of. 
Hon Rick Barker 
: What about the Goodnight Kiwi? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: We have already seen the demise of the Goodnight Kiwi. Of course the Goodnight Kiwi cartoon was of the Goodnight Kiwi leaving Avalon Studios and going up the mast to be put to bed. Avalon was iconic; it was the symbol of public television broadcasting in New Zealand. I find it particularly sad when we drive past there at night now and see that the building is completely dark. When I was growing up in the Hutt as a kid we would drive past the Avalon complex and it would look alight in the evenings. That was where all of the New Zealand television was coming from. We always knew when  
Fair Go  
was being produced in the evening because all of the lights of the studios would be on and the car park would be full. Once upon a time  
Fair Go  
was the most popular show on New Zealand Television—I think it probably still is—and it was filmed in front of a live audience at Avalon. I had the opportunity to sit in the audience for one of those filmings. I sat in the audience for the filming of some of the game shows:  
Wheel of Fortune Sale of the Century 
 and so on.  
Sale of the Century 
 was probably not the pinnacle of public broadcasting in New Zealand; none the less it was filmed at the Avalon TV studios in my electorate. 
Game shows are another one of the things that will be very difficult to produce in New Zealand after we see the demise of those large studios that currently reside in Avalon because Television New Zealand is not willing to back them. The broadcaster is not willing to behave as a public broadcaster which it should do. I think that is an absolute disgrace. We could call this bill the “We Don’t Have a Public Television Broadcasting Service in New Zealand Bill” because I think that ultimately that is where we have got to. We simply do not have public television broadcasting in New Zealand. I think we should be honest about it and say that we have probably not had it for several decades. I do not think that Television New Zealand has ever been in its current corporate incarnation a public television broadcaster. It has never been set up that way. Right from the point when it became a State-owned enterprise it ceased to be a public broadcaster. The almighty dollar became the most important thing. The studios and the head office relocated to Auckland. Television New Zealand now is effectively “Television Auckland”. Everything we see on our screens is largely produced there and very little is produced in other parts of the country. I think that is an absolute tragedy.  
Television New Zealand does not reflect New Zealand. It is no different as I said before to what we see on TV3 or Sky television. As we move to technology convergence I think we could call this bill the “Bill that is Years Out of Date Bill” because as we move towards technology convergence the platform that the content is delivered upon is a lot less important than the content itself. Television New Zealand’s future must be in producing New Zealand content that is distinctly New Zealand’s. If Television New Zealand is only about repackaging stuff that comes in from overseas—from America from Britain and from Australia—it will have no distinctive features and no distinctive content and frankly there will be no need for it to exist. Television New Zealand’s future must be in telling New Zealand stories and producing New Zealand content but it is not doing that. This bill does nothing to achieve that—in fact it goes in the other direction. Ultimately that is why I think we should call this bill the “Final Death of Public Broadcasting in New Zealand Bill”.