Hipkins Chris: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 20 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3477. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill. My last contribution was so good. I am very happy to take a call on this bill. My cold is catching up with me so you will have to forgive me if my voice is not perhaps quite as booming as it was in my last contribution.Hon Annette King: Have a glass of water.CHRIS HIPKINS: I have had lots of water so I will be fine. I am very strongly in favour of this bill and it is good to see that it is finally going to progress through the House. I think it is disappointing that it has taken such a long period of time to get it through the House. Of course the Radio New Zealand Act requires that the Radio New Zealand charter is reviewed every 5 years. So the fact that this is based on a review that happened nearly 10 years ago means that we are probably a couple of reviews behind and hopefully there will be further amendments required in due course.I think one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that technological change is happening really rapidly in this area. Just reading through the charter that is attached to this bill it is important to note the really strong emphasis that is placed on broadcasting within that. And yet the lines between broadcasting and other forms of technology are becoming so blurred now that there will inevitably need to be further change and further evolution in this area. Actually Radio New Zealand in my strong view should not necessarily be about public non-commercial broadcast content but public non-commercial content and making sure that that is widely available and that will be through a variety of different mediums including online content. Radio New Zealand is increasingly doing more work in that area and I think that that is a very welcome thing.Tim Macindoe: Programmes about throats?CHRIS HIPKINS: Programmes about colds sore throats and all those sorts of things would be useful.I think that Judith Collins was wrong when she said that commercial broadcasters in New Zealand do not get one cent of Government subsidy. That is not true. As Gareth Hughes has just pointed out MediaWorks has done pretty well out of the current Government. And she mentioned a few high-profile broadcasters in her contribution including Paul Henry Mike Hosking and others. I want to say that I think that is absolutely fine. I think there is a legitimate place in the New Zealand media for those voices just as there is a legitimate place for the John Campbells and others.I think that really what we should be aiming for in New Zealand is a wide diversity of views and opinions within the New Zealand media. But the niche if you like that Radio New Zealand fills within that is that it can do more in-depth fact checking more in-depth investigative journalism which the commercial broadcasters and commercial media outlets are struggling to do not because they do not want to do it not because the journalists working for those organisations are not very very good journalists—they are—but simply because they are far more resource constrained. If the commercial media environment cannot fund that level of investigative journalism inquiry and diverse debate then we do need as a society to ensure that it is publicly available in some other form. Radio New Zealand in the radio sphere has certainly been a bastion of that.I have heard people on the other side of the House refer to Radio New Zealand as a bastion of left-wing propaganda. Radio New Zealand deals with facts and it is one of the organisations that do a lot of fact checking. If dealing in facts makes it left wing then yes I guess it will have to wear that particular label but I do not believe that it has any bias politically. I think what it does do—Tim Macindoe: Ha ha!CHRIS HIPKINS: I do not believe that Radio New Zealand is politically biased at all. I think it strives very very hard not to be politically biased but there are some journalists out there who make no bones about their political bias and that is fine if they are open and upfront about it. I think Radio New Zealand tries very carefully to not do that as the State broadcaster. I think we have a lot less bias in Radio New Zealand for example than we do in Television New Zealand where Mike Hosking’s editorials are very biased. But he is upfront about that and that is OK but I think there is a need to balance that by ensuring that an equally compelling alternative view is put forward and I do not think Television New Zealand does that very well. I think it lets New Zealand down as the nation’s television broadcaster in not providing that diversity something I know that Radio New Zealand strives very very hard to provide.I am very supportive of this bill. I am also very supportive of the Government taking the foot off Radio New Zealand’s throat in terms of the funding constraints it has been under. Overall this is a good piece of legislation.