Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I am wondering whether there is a bit of a split in the Government over this bill because it appears to me that Chris Bishop is very wedded to the party political broadcasts being shown on our State broadcaster. In fact if he would rather watch that than an All Blacks test then I guess you have got to ask yourself a question of how in touch he is. Perhaps that is a signal that Ginny Andersen is going to win in Hutt South.On a more serious note this is a fairly straightforward bill—it is a fairly straightforward amendment to the Broadcasting Act 1989. Labour is supporting it to the select committee and I want to acknowledge the work that has clearly been done through the Justice and Electoral Committee's inquiry into the 2014 general election and the clear need to modernise communications to the public around election time. It appears that there is a degree of unanimity around that.I do however want to introduce a note of caution in that this appears to have been a rather curious process. Although I am acknowledging the process through the Justice and Electoral Committee inquiry there has been another process happening at the same time along with this election inquiry. These same measures—and others—have also been canvassed in a parallel process conducted by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage under the auspices of the Minister of Broadcasting who happens to be the same person who is the Minister of Justice. Under her auspices this particular piece of legislation has emerged.Why that is curious is that process seems to have been a bit left off to one side in this piece of legislation. That process has actually got a name. It was a discussion document that was called Content Regulation in a Converged World and it did a lot more than look at party political broadcasts during the election campaign. It focused on the effects of convergence in the media sector on the regulation of content in New Zealand looking particularly at the requirements and restrictions relating to the classification of content broadcasting of election programmes and advertising times and it also considered the Government's interventions to support the production of broadcast content all of which is pretty important. It was intended to be a health check on the existing frameworks to ensure that they reflected the current media landscape and remained fit for purpose. It sort of reflected to some degree what the Minister just said in her speech around modernisation but this parallel process does not appear to have made it into the backgrounding that has formed this bill.This review was put out to the public last year and there were a number of submissions. The submissions—as you would expect given it was a convergence review in the broadcasting environment—mainly came from the broadcasting sector. They included submissions from Radio New Zealand and I am going to read you out a little bit about what Radio New Zealand had to say because it is directly impacted on by this and presumably will submit again in the select committee process. Radio New Zealand took the issue and looked at it a lot more broadly than the narrow scope that is being provided for in this bill and I think it is worth just noting that Radio New Zealand said that The law must be clarified to ensure advertising and editorial material are clearly and consistently distinguished from each other." That includes political satire which "should not be constrained in any way by rules that apply to advertising." It makes the point—and I think it is a valid point—that Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand "once dominated the channels of distribution to media consumers but are now two of many participants competing for consumers' attention both on-air and online." It also made the point that "It is anomalous that RNZ is obligated to carry opening and closing addresses."Its submission also talks about a principle that was mentioned by a number of submitters on this review. This is that a principle should be adopted so that "it is political parties that need to be regulated and not broadcasters." and that "It is ironic that during general elections the period of time in which the free flow of information and ideas is surely paramount freedom of political speech in editorial coverage is restrained by the Electoral Commission." Those issues are pertinent and important but this bill has a very narrow scope and this review that has just been undertaken is raising bigger issues wider issues that should be being canvassed—perhaps through legislation perhaps through another process—and this bill unfortunately does not go there. It looks as though it is going to be pushed through quite quickly and we are not going to get the opportunity to have the conversation that perhaps we need to have.I am also going to just quickly reference the submission by the Coalition for Better Broadcasting which mentioned another issue that again is not being canvassed. This is that "it is apparent from cases such as the appearance of the prime minister talking with celebrities on an ostensibly non-election programme on Radio Live (the complaints about which were rejected by the BSA but upheld by the Electoral Commission) that there is a need to extend the definition of what constitutes an election-related programme." This is an important issue as well and my concern is that this parallel process which is raising important issues does not appear to be being considered by the very same Minister who has introduced this legislation even though she is the one that initiated this review.Finally I want to talk about the context of that review because that review looked at a whole lot of other things. In 2 years this is all that has emerged—this very narrow-scope piece of legislation—while there are huge seismic shifts happening in our media sector at the moment with two major media mergers being considered. The future of Radio New Zealand is under a cloud because its funding has been frozen for 8 years and it is having to sell its Auckland building in order to be able to keep operating. Television New Zealand is spending $60 million on refurbishing its building. There are a lot of things really out of kilter here. The future of media is really up in the air to a large degree in New Zealand and here we have got a very narrow-scope piece of legislation that looks as if it is the only one that will emerge in 3 years of this Minister of Broadcasting even though she is doing this as the Minister of Justice. This is it.Apparently we are going to get a digital convergence bill that will address two other matters which are the classification of content online and on television to try to harmonise that and to look at the issue of advertising on television on Sundays. Both of those things are important but they are hardly earth-shattering are they? The point I am making is that there is a much wider context and there are much broader issues some of which have been touched on by submitters in this parallel process that has been undertaken which this Minister clearly is not interested in touching. We will support this bill to select committee. I am looking forward to there being a robust discussion as a result of some of these submissions. Hopefully submitters will raise these issues when they come before the select committee."