Hughes Gareth: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 20 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3476. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green):Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Following on from the contribution by Ms Collins I am sure that there are a few National Cabinet Ministers who would like to hear the end of those dulcet tones on Checkpoint given what we have seen over the years.I want to touch on a theme. This is my third term of Parliament and something I have noticed is that inexorably when the Clerk reads out the new legislation being introduced at the beginning of Parliament the numbers are massively down. It has been an awfully long time since we have seen any new ideas any new legislation and here is a classic example. The Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill is something that has been referred from the review of a committee from 2006 and it did not get around to being issued to a select committee until 2009 and here is the Government with nothing else pressing on the legislative agenda finally getting around to this bill 6 years later. It is finally getting around to looking at this bill. That tells you a few things.If public broadcasting was a priority this bill could have been knocked off many many years ago. It is an uncontroversial bill. This bill simply enshrines in statute the charter for Radio New Zealand which is something that all parties in this Parliament agree on. It also says something about the Government’s priorities because the only public broadcasting change except for a massive funding freeze to the sector is in fact an uncontroversial bill doing something that should have come about in the mid-2000s. It is setting up finally the charter for Radio New Zealand.It is not controversial. We are talking about a charter that talks about Radio New Zealand being “independent and commercial-free”—which it is at the moment—and having freedom of thought and expression fostering a sense of national identity providing independent freely accessible news and enriching our broadcasting environment. It is all good stuff which none of the 165 submissions could be opposed to. But I do want to talk about something Ms Collins said. In her contribution she talked about nothing being available for other broadcasters which highlighted somehow the Government’s exceedingly high generosity in funding public broadcasting—or Radio New Zealand—in New Zealand. One word: it is MediaWorks. We saw a fantastically huge bailout for MediaWorks and its stable of commercial radio stations from this Government.Let us look at the facts. In the last year of the previous Labour Government KPMG produced a report saying that Radio New Zealand was suffering from a funding shortfall in 2007. It recommended a $6.7 million urgent reinjection. What have we seen since then since the National Government was elected in 2008? Zero. It has seen an absolute funding freeze across that period which has been an effective funding cut to the only public broadcaster in this country—that is Radio New Zealand. Television One and TV2 of course are not public broadcasters. Māori Television serves a different service—an important service. We have seen a 9 percent funding cut in real terms.This is something that needs to be addressed because it is important for all those reasons that we are passing into law now to foster that sense of national identity—to have that freely available independent news and to hear those Kiwi voices. I would not call the $25 million exceedingly generous. This is half on a per capita basis of what the Australians fund for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and a third what the Brits do when it comes to the BBC. We are a laggard when it comes to public broadcasting.So I challenge the Government: if it is serious it should put its money where its mouth is tomorrow. This is part of the foundation for a strong civic society a foundation for our democracy. That is why the Greens are supporting public broadcasting and it is why we need a public television broadcaster. Really the question is for the Government to put its money where its mouth is.