Curran Clare: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5049. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well 6 years it has taken for this modernisation and futureproofing bill to come before the Committee—6 years; 6 long years. In the debate on the second reading of the Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill there was much discussion about the importance of Radio New Zealand National and how much we all valued it. But it took this Government 6 years to get this piece of legislation to this point of the debate in Parliament.The review of the charter is supposed to be conducted every 5 years. As a result of the 6 years that this legislation has been sitting on the Order Paper it has actually skipped a review. And so my first question tonight to the Minister in the chair the Hon Amy Adams is in her hopefully comprehensive contributions on this bill to ask for some clarity to be given to the Committee on what the legal status is of the Radio New Zealand charter given that it has actually skipped a review that should have taken place some time within the last 6 years. Instead we are now voting on legislation from a review of the charter from back in I think 2006—it might have even been 2005. So that is the first question that I have got for the Minister in the chair tonight because I am sure she will have received some advice from officials.However there is no doubt that this bill is worthy of support and Labour has supported it because of the importance of Radio New Zealand National and the Radio New Zealand charter. We believe though that the Government should be highly embarrassed for treating this bill and calling it a modernisation and futureproofing bill. We note that there is a Supplementary Order Paper before the Committee tonight. I am looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about it but ultimately the fact that it has taken 6 years to get this bill back to the House shows the disrespect for Radio New Zealand the fundamental disrespect for Radio New Zealand and the disrespect that this Government has for public broadcasting generally. We believe that that is just another example of the arrogant and out-of-touch nature of this Government.It was 3 years ago this week actually—the Committee might be interested to know and certainly the people listening at home will be interested to know—that New Zealand’s only attempt at a true non-commercial public television broadcaster TVNZ 7 got the chop. That was shut down due to the National Government’s refusal to continue its funding. TVNZ 7 was the brainchild of the former Clark Labour Government—and it made an extremely good fist of managing with a reasonably small amount of funding to bring us many jewels of programmes. However the Government as soon as it could decided that it was going to discontinue that and give it the axe and it did. Around that same time the Government was under fire because it gave a $43 million handout to MediaWorks. It came under a lot of criticism for that. That was around the same time that it was axing the only public television broadcaster—the point of this is the attitude in general that this Government has to public broadcasting.At the same time—around that time if a little bit earlier than that—New Zealand On Air had been embroiled in a big controversy because of the appointment and the behaviour of one of its board members who happened to be the Prime Minister’s electorate secretary Stephen McElrea. He had questioned the timing of a New Zealand On Air - funded documentary Inside Child Poverty which was broadcast just 4 days before the 2011 election. Fast-forward 3 years and there are now allegations of editorial and political interference swirling around Māori Television the behaviour of the chief executive and the impact on the current affairs programme Native Affairs.Meanwhile Radio New Zealand New Zealand On Air and Māori Television have endured—endured—a 7-year funding freeze with the inevitable shrinking of New Zealand - made quality content. What is the impact of that? It is a huge impact. Here we have a bill that has taken 6 years to get before this Committee 6 years to reform review and look at how its charter can be improved. That charter and the improvements to that charter we have no issue with; we have no problem with. We support the bill. What we do have an issue with is the way that the Government treats public broadcasting in general. It treats it with disdain and disrespect and we ask how long—how long—can Radio New Zealand continue on under its current funding regime and still provide the quality service that it does?A few months ago its own chair said in the select committee in response to a question from me about the possible cuts as a result of the funding freeze which is essentially a 25 percent funding cut over the last 7 years “Clare you’re right. The impact of inflation has eroded the purchasing power but we are getting to the point where those limited rations are getting more difficult to handle. And I am quite happy to go on the record on that.”That was the chair—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Come back to the charter.CLARE CURRAN: In relation to this bill which is about the supposed modernisation and futureproofing of Radio New Zealand the Minister of Broadcasting has Supplementary Order Paper 94 on the Table. Before I talk to that I am hoping that she will get up and explain to the Committee what lies behind that. Labour has also got three amendments on the Table tonight as amendments to that Supplementary Order Paper which we will talk to during this debate. We hope that that will be a constructive discussion. We support the Supplementary Order Paper as being the only indication that we have seen in the last 6 years of a desire by this Government to actually show that it is about modernising and futureproofing Radio New Zealand.We have got just a few concerns with some of the clauses in that amendment and how they can be interpreted and that is why we have put up some suggestions for some amendments to that Supplementary Order Paper. In general we support this bill. We think that Radio New Zealand is one of our most treasured parts of our broadcasting environment and we think that the vast majority of New Zealanders support it. It has very high listenership and support in the community and that is due to the fact that it is commercial-free that it puts the public interest first and that the people who work and create the content for Radio New Zealand are absolutely committed to telling New Zealand stories and to doing it in a way that is providing a high degree of editorial integrity and high-quality standards. We heartily support that and put on record our support for Radio New Zealand and all that it stands for.