Genter Julie AnneJULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I would like to thank the member who has brought this bill to the House. I think it is worthy of debate and consideration absolutely—the proposal that there are certain sporting events that should be able to be watched by every New Zealander and they should be available. I think a fundamental principle of the Green Party's broadcasting policy is that we should have 100 percent accessible broadcasting we should have support for a wide range of publicly available free-to-air content and even though the mode in which that content is delivered is in flux and is changing at the moment it is fundamentally important that there is public support for content and access. Without a public broadcaster we have seen that it is not possible to get good quality content that is available to everyone.I think that some of the Government members' speeches tonight have demonstrated how the narrow view of user-pays or number of eyeballs watching a particular show determines whether or not it gets public funding is not a model that is going to deliver the things that are really important to New Zealanders. There are things that are of immense cultural and social importance to New Zealanders—Hon Simon Bridges: Talk to us about sport you've watched.JULIE ANNE GENTER: We will get to that Simon—we will get to that. There are things that are incredibly important to our identity as a country. What other countries around the world particularly small countries have found is that it is vitally important to have public investment in public broadcasting. As the member who is sponsoring this bill noted in his speech there are a number of countries around the world that do have similar provisions to what is proposed in this bill. It ensures that people in Canada the UK or Australia are all able to watch those sporting events that are of great importance to the nation.The Green Party supports the investigation of this bill. Government members' speeches tonight have very much focused on who is going to pay for it and what is the cost. It is important that we understand because I think the Hon Trevor Mallard's speech did indicate that the way the bill has been drafted there are potentially quite a lot of fish-hooks. That is something we would be extremely concerned about during the select committee process.Fundamentally this comes back to values. What I have found out there from talking to New Zealanders is that a lot of New Zealanders really value those national sporting events and they are really upset that people have to get a subscription to Sky television to see many of them. The fact that some of these events are of such great value to New Zealand was reflected in the fact that the Government made the decision to buy the rights to the New Zealand Rugby World Cup in 2011 so that all New Zealanders could watch it free to air live while those games were being played here in New Zealand.Clearly the Government does understand that at times there are really important events but that is the exception rather than the rule. I think we have to think about what is of real importance to New Zealanders and then we say: That's important to us this is something we want to share and it should be available to everyone." By the way all of that should be captioned—that is not in this bill—so that it is accessible to everyone. The reality is that with the changes in the media environment and with electronic equipment and filming equipment it is actually getting much much cheaper to film these events and to broadcast them on a variety of mediums.So it is quite possible that the cost of that will come down. The real cost that we would have to investigate would be the support for sport in schools and for some of these sporting clubs. What I do like about this bill is that it includes women's sports as well as men's sports. I think that is really important. Of course the Green Party would have to consider what the full cost implications would be but I think it is safe to say that if something is important to New Zealanders we can get behind it. Everybody should be able to watch these sporting games and we should find a way to make it happen because it is possible."