Curran Clare: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9915. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I last spoke about this bill last Thursday night. Just to recap very briefly we are addressing the passage of a bill that has been sitting on the Order Paper since 2009 following a review of the Radio New Zealand charter that took place in 2005—so this is 11 years after a review took place.There is a statutory requirement for a review of the Radio New Zealand charter to occur every 5 years. In essence we have skipped two reviews. Therefore by the time the legislation before us tonight is actually passed it may be out of date. I want to put that on the record. I think that what that represents is the lack of commitment that the Government has shown towards public broadcasting in this country and its disdain for ensuring that we are keeping up to date and taking seriously Radio New Zealand’s role in how our democracy functions and the importance of public broadcasting for public debate and commercial-free discussion and programming.Radio New Zealand operates in very difficult circumstances. As a result it has been under a funding freeze since 2009. It is doing the best job it can and that job is pretty good. It is making the transition to multimedia broadcasting and it is doing that in difficult circumstances. Unfortunately the chair of Radio New Zealand revealed to a select committee a couple of weeks ago that it would not be making a funding bid in this Budget. That is very disappointing and sad quite frankly but whatever. Radio New Zealand is also undergoing restructuring while it adapts to a multimedia environment and that has created some pain within the organisation.We support this legislation; we support the review that took place. We know that the minute this legislation gets passed Radio New Zealand is no doubt going to go into another cycle of a review so it kind of makes a farce of the whole process.We also note that the Minister of Broadcasting submitted a substantial amendment in the Committee stage and did not speak to that amendment until briefly in the third reading. The essence of that was to make provision for multi-platform provisions and for the generation of new content-related revenue streams overseas assuming that it can find any buyers. It is a bit like the BBC versus BBC World Service where the commercial arm generates revenue but the core services are still subject to public service provisions. However Radio New Zealand does not have any plans at this point that we know of to generate revenue in that way and it is very constricted by its current funding environment.Lastly I would like to put on the record that there is a member’s bill in the ballot called the Radio New Zealand (Catch-up Funding) Amendment Bill which does increase funding for Radio New Zealand by around 20 to 25 percent using inflation and population growth as the way to make those adjustments. This would make a difference and would ensure that this bill actually does have some meaning when it finally is enacted by making Radio New Zealand the efficient meaningful organisation and provider of value to the New Zealand community that it should be and ensuring that it is properly funded. Unfortunately this bill before the House tonight rings hollow because of the situation that Radio New Zealand finds itself in.