Kedgley Sue: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:672;Page:18278] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party too considers that the Television New Zealand Amendment Bill is shocking legislation that will strip TVNZ not just of its charter but of any public service obligations or responsibility. It will turn TVNZ into a nakedly commercial broadcaster that is focused solely on chasing ratings and advertising revenues and that is indistinguishable from any other commercial broadcaster. Once this bill is passed TVNZ will exist for the sole purpose of returning a dividend to the Government and it will not be expected to deliver anything other than a profit to the Government. In fact when the Minister was asked what exactly the point is of the Government owning two television channels that have no public service functions or responsibilities and are solely commercial the Minister answered that they would play a valuable role in returning a profit to the shareholder. In other words the Government will own two television channels for the sole purpose of extracting money from them. It is extraordinary. 
The Green Party was the first to admit that the previous dual mandate of TVNZ was not a great success. But at least the charter spelt out explicitly and unequivocally that TVNZ was expected to be a public service broadcaster to serve the public interest to have high-quality news and current affairs and so forth. Once this bill is passed there will be no obligation on TVNZ to provide impartial news and current affairs to screen documentaries to screen any children’s television programmes to screen any drama or to screen any minority programmes. Indeed there will be no obligation on TVNZ even to screen New Zealand programmes. We can expect to see fewer and fewer New Zealand programmes on TVNZ for the simple reason as others have pointed out that it is far more expensive to produce New Zealand programmes than it is to import cheap programmes from overseas. 
That is why on TV2 we have 17 percent New Zealand content and 83 percent of the content is cheap foreign programmes. Basically TV2 is just an offshore channel and this is what Television One will become. It is also of course the same reason why the Government refused to fund $15 million a year in order for TVNZ to continue with TVNZ 7. The board of TVNZ told the Commerce Committee that it had put a case to the Government for TVNZ to continue to fund TVNZ 7 but TVNZ was turned down flat by this Government because it is not interested in does not understand and does not care about public service television. It wants TVNZ to be a solely commercial broadcaster. 
Of course once this bill is passed we will be the only country in the Western World that does not have a mainstream public service television broadcaster. The campaign Save TVNZ 7 says that every self-respecting democracy in the world funds a public television broadcaster. In Europe every Government funds one. Most of the Governments in Asia the Middle East and Africa fund public service television. Everywhere—except New Zealand—public service television is being funded. And why do countries fund it? They invest in public service television because they understand that public service television is essential not just for the sake of their national identity but also in order to have a healthy democracy and an informed society. Public service television promotes ideas and perspectives that are ignored in commercially driven ratings-driven television. In commercial television the ratings are the only measure the sole measure of the success of a programme whereas in public service television programmes are also driven by the public interest—not just by ratings. 
The most galling thing of all is that at the very time that the Government is stripping TVNZ of any public service obligations it is bailing out its mates. It is subsiding its mates in MediaWorks the company set up by Steven Joyce that is in fact TVNZ’s commercial competitor. The Government is effectively funding it subsidising it by $43 million with a loan deferral scheme. I learnt from a previous speaker Clare Curran that the Minister has met nine times with the board of MediaWorks. That is shocking. The Government went against the advice of Treasury and of the Ministry of Economic Development in extending the loan to MediaWorks. They said the Government was effectively acting as a bank for MediaWorks in deferring its loan. So the Government can extend $43 million in a subsidy to MediaWorks but it cannot afford $15 million for TVNZ 7. 
The Minister is yet to outline any clear broadcasting strategy but it is clear that the underlying strategy is to fully commercialise TVNZ in order to ready it for sale in the next term of Government. That was the agenda back in the 1990s and now we are here to finish off the unfinished business and to sell off TVNZ. Anyone who thinks otherwise is I think being naive. 
Another agenda of TVNZ appears to be to move away from free-to-air television into pay television. It seems that the Government wants to remove free-to-air television and have just pay TV. We were told at the Commerce Committee that the main growth area for TVNZ for the business is expected to be pay TV and that TVNZ plans to pitch even more channels to Sky television than it is doing currently. TVNZ is openly courting Sky which has a 50 percent market share. It has launched the TVNZ Heartland channel exclusively on Sky. Then it announced it will be producing a 24-hour channel for preschool kids on Sky and it is looking at further opportunities. Indeed the head of digital services for TVNZ Eric Kearley said: “There has been a lot of talk about media revolutions but the real revolution has been a move from ad-funded television to pay.” At the select committee we said that if all of TVNZ’s growth is focused on developing channels for pay TV surely that undermines free-to-air TV. It must be undermining it. But it is clear that this is the agenda here; the agenda here is to move us along into pay TV. 
The problem is that Sky television provides almost no local content apart from sport and is prohibitively expensive. According to some estimates as many as 2 million New Zealanders will not be able to afford to buy a Sky subscription. So why is this Government moving to switch to pay TV and away from free-to-air television? With the ditching of TVNZ 7 what will be the point for people like myself who have invested in the FreeView platform? There will be no channels to watch apart from Television One and TV2. Once again once TVNZ 7 is ditched next year all the incentive will be to move more and more to Sky. That seems to be the Government’s agenda. 
Someone recently reminded me that  
The Hollow Men 
 had revealed a discreet but direct relationship between Murdoch senior and one of his sons and key insider advisers in the Brash campaign. So it is interesting that at the very same time that we have Mr Brash resurfacing in New Zealand to strip as someone said New Zealand of our remaining assets we have the Government with its Sky-friendly policies moving to switch it seems from free-to-air TV to pay TV. I note that the Government is about to allow Sky to access Government funding so that is all part of its agenda.