Falloon AndrewANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call this evening which I think will only be a brief call because it is quite a brief bill and actually a very simple bill and a common-sense bill. It is the Broadcasting (New Zealand on Air and Te Māngai Pāho Reporting Requirements) Amendment Bill. What I can't quite understand even after listening to the better part of five minutes from Minister Chris Hipkins is quite why it is that the Government are opposing this bill and I'll come back to that in a moment if I can. But I just want to run through really quickly what this bill does because it is very straight forward. All it will require is for New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho to publish quarterly reports that show viewership figures of every project they fund including television ratings radio ratings online views and any other viewership reporting tools along with a breakdown of the costs associated.I sit on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee—a very good committee—where we regularly discuss broadcasting issues and one of the things I find most useful in those discussions is looking at some of the broadcasting data and particularly viewership figures. They allow us to track interest in programming and particularly trends up and down and more than anything actually to make assessments about value for money. But one of the challenges we have in doing those assessments is often we get data that doesn't quite line up or comes from different sources and so it makes those assessments about cost-effectiveness far more difficult.So this bill would make those discussions a lot easier because it would allow us to match up across a number of different platforms who's viewing or watching or reading what. So it would be a very valuable addition because after all this isn't just about MPs though it's not just about the assessment that we make; it is about the public—the wider public and allowing taxpayers also to make those assessments to say We're not watching something. Why shouldn't we know if we're not watching something and then we can decide if or not it is valuable to us?" Because that programming is of course paid for by taxpayers and that's not actually something that's been raised at all by Government members tonight. When New Zealand On Air funds something that money comes from taxpayers. So why wouldn't we let them know—quarterly as this bill would—what exactly it is New Zealanders are watching and what they're getting for their money.Now I did listen to Minister Chris Hipkins take five minutes to outline some of the reasons why the Government's voting against this bill and one of the reasons he highlighted was red tape. Now that made me laugh because it's not very often a Labour Minister comes down to this House and complains about red tape but the reason he said "We can't have this bill because of red tape." Well actually Minister this bill is about transparency. If all we were concerned about was red tape and putting compliance on to Government agencies and departments we wouldn't have the Official Information Act because that is red tape but it's an important tool for transparency in a democracy. So I can't quite fathom why it is that the Government would be voting against this bill which is all about transparency.Now I don't think there is some grand conspiracy as to why they're voting against this bill—why they don't want the public to know who is watching or viewing what—I just think they've got it wrong. So I do ask the Minister who's come down to the House which is actually quite surprising—he perhaps has been listening to some of his colleagues giving speeches on earlier bills and thought "Gosh I need to get down there and get things back on track."—but I would ask him to reconsider his position on this bill and reconsider the Government's position on this bill. At least support it to select committee so that it can go there we can hear from those taxpayers we can hear from New Zealanders about why it is they deserve that information and why this bill should be passed."