Burns Brendon: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Burns Brendon: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18759] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I am very pleased to continue my call on this part of the bill. We were discussing issues around the archiving of TVNZ works under this part which inserts new section 57A. One of the points I want to make is that TVNZ and its predecessor have a very proud history of making good-quality public service broadcasting content. In fact I started my career as a young New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation reporter in the mid-1970s working on programmes like  
Town and Around 
 which was the regional television current affairs programme for Wellington and the wider region. Other members of the Committee may recall a similar version called  
The South Tonight 
 and in the Auckland region it was called  
Top Half 
. Those programmes sparked the careers of a number of illustrious broadcasters. That was the environment we were working in. 
But the question I want to ask the Minister of Broadcasting tonight is what access New Zealanders will have should they wish to watch any of those past archived programmes and others. I think of programmes like  
Country Calendar 
 which endures to this day. In fact it is about the only TVNZ programme that has survived from that era through to the present day with a number of permutations but still very popular. I still well remember probably its best-known episode—a spoof programme done around 1 April featuring turkeys in gumboots. This was not a visit by the National caucus to rural New Zealand. This was a programme around a spoof that supposedly this turkey farm had put all of its stock in gumboots. That is the sort of programme people still enjoy but those programmes need a vehicle. They need a channel that will screen them. Of course we have seen under this Minister of Broadcasting the loss already of TVNZ 6 to become a commercial music channel. Some of us with an interest in the broadcasting sphere thought that maybe that is the cost of being in a recession. Maybe that might be what we have to give away to maintain a non-commercial TVNZ channel and maybe TVNZ 7 might still have a future. But a month ago the Minister announced that TVNZ 7 would go off air next year and that the funding for that channel would not be renewed in any shape or form and there are even questions around whether TVNZ was asked for that funding or was trying to find that funding itself. 
We are now providing under new section 57A that archived works will be available for public viewing but I would like to ask the Minister what medium or channel TVNZ would use to put on air archived content. Those programmes have their place. People I know watch things like past British sitcoms. It is a very small stream of audience but still it is a popular subset. Of course those programmes are available only on the Sky network. What we are talking about is past New Zealand content content that has been funded by us as taxpayers by us as shareholders in TVNZ when it became a more commercially oriented company. Given that the main premise of this bill is that TVNZ shall have a focus only on commercial function—that is to make a profit—where will the public viewing of New Zealand content provided for under this bill be screened? My suspicion and belief is that although this part of the bill is making this content available for public viewing in fact it will not be for what we might consider public viewing—that is viewing available to all New Zealanders. It may be available to people who have Sky subscriptions and that leaves 2 million New Zealanders even with the predominance of Sky who would not be able to see the very content that this part of the bill suggests they will be able to see. 
The two channels that were available to show New Zealanders that sort of content are going off air or have already gone off air under this Minister. I think that is extraordinarily unfortunate. Those channels were to provide the platforms for TVNZ to have a presence in the digital age which is another essential element of this bill. We saw the creation of the FreeView platform to provide an alternative to subscription television. People had a choice. In fact we are getting shrinking choices under this bill. Even under this part which suggests there may be more capacity for New Zealanders to see some of their own content created in the past and put in the vaults out at Avalon that content will not I believe be able to be seen by at least half of the New Zealand population because the platforms they would have been able to see them on are being whittled away by this Government. 
I would like to note that in an interview the Minister gave to  
Morning Report 
 about a month ago as he was explaining the demise of TVNZ 7 he mentioned how everybody would be getting quality programming from many different sources including the internet in the future which of course is true. But we have to ask where the role for public service broadcasting is in that and whether there will be under TVNZ—an important question for the Minister—a capacity to show on the internet at least some of this archived content. Will New Zealanders be able to see that or as I suspect will we have to pay for that privilege whether via the internet or via Sky because TVNZ is simply told that its only function is to make a good dividend for the Government? The idea that the internet creates content is a bit of a misnomer anyway. Internet providers or those who use the internet tend to take content mash it up and do their own things with it. It is not actually a vehicle for creating content; it is a vehicle for relaying content most particularly. As mentioned this bill supposedly will allow New Zealanders to see their archived works in a public viewing sense but nothing in this bill spells out where that actually will be provided for. 
I also draw attention to some of the leading broadcasting academics who have written to the Minister and to the Government over the axing of TVNZ 7 which of course they saw would have been one of the prime vehicles—in fact the remaining prime vehicle—for the public viewing of archived works. But of course from next year from about this time next year under this Government there will be no TVNZ 7; there will be no channel to allow New Zealanders other than those taking out a Sky subscription to see the content they have paid for. Those academics have noted that every other OECD country bar Mexico has a public service broadcasting television channel—at least one. We like to regard ourselves as a First World nation and one of the measures of that is having—members opposite can believe it or not—a State channel at least one that has a requirement to provide a sometimes non-commercial sometimes lightly commercial and sometimes commercial channel but at least one that has the mandate to regard itself as providing more than a dividend stream to the Government. But here we are in this part of the bill looking at screening supposedly some of the very content New Zealanders have a right to see which is some of the content Maori Television is picking up in a very clever low-budget way and showing us. They are programmes like Maori Television’s version of  
It’s in the Bag 
. We can see the Maori equivalent now on Maori Television— 
Kris Faafoi 
: Sam wants the money. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: That is fine because I am not going to give him the bag. It would be unfair. But the point is that Maori Television is providing that kind of programming and we will not be able to see the original should we wish on our State-owned channel because it will not be there. We will be able to go and watch it on Sky maybe via the Heartland channel—