te Heuheu Georgina: Broadcasting Amendment Bill — In Committee 
te Heuheu Georgina: Broadcasting Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:645;Page:14709] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (National) 
: 
 In that respect the member who has just resumed his seat is absolutely correct—the Broadcasting Amendment Bill is probably long overdue. I guess those who inhabit the world of Generation Y—or is it Generation X—would say: “Goodness me where do these people come from? They are taking so long to enable the funding of new formats.” Obviously it is a phenomenon that will be understood a lot better by them than by some of us here. 
National supports this bill obviously. It enables the two funding agencies NZ On Air and Te Mangai Paho to fund the production transmission and archiving of new forms of digital content. That is particularly important in the digital broadcasting environment. Also important is the fact it amends Te Mangai Paho’s primary function by adding the archiving of Maori language and culture programmes to those matters that it already funds. That is very important given that Maori culture and language are key to New Zealand’s unique identity. Again one would think that measure was overdue as well. It is a proper amendment to be made and as I said at the beginning it is probably long overdue in respect of both these funding agencies. 
My colleague Dr Coleman was right to put an emphasis on the woes of Television New Zealand (TVNZ) and the Government’s performance in that arena in the last 9 years. It is interesting that Marian Hobbs is the presiding officer in the Chair because the charter might more rightly be called her baby. But let us attribute the baby to both Marian Hobbs and Steve Maharey who are so in love with it. It has proved in a way to be their Achilles heel in National’s view. The dual remit has seen TVNZ as I say have a very woeful time of it for the whole 9 years this Government has been in power and frankly there is nothing to say that in 2008 it has got its head around it yet. That is not a fair return to the taxpayer—it just is not. Millions of dollars have gone into a black hole. There has been no accountability whatsoever. Every time others try to get some accountability especially at the select committee when I was more involved in broadcasting in previous years they would say: “This is commercially sensitive.” So there was never any way that one could actually pin TVNZ down. 
One matter I want to mention is that National would be very very concerned if for instance TVNZ applied funding for content that could be accessed only through pay-per-view cellphones. This is taxpayer funding we are talking about and it seems to me that sometimes TVNZ tends to forget that. That is an area we would be very concerned about. I have just seen in the  
Independent 
 I think an article about TVNZ setting up a pay-per-view channel. Well goodness me; TVNZ gets taxpayers’ money to deliver FreeView into hopefully every home. The cost of course is prohibitive and there will be a lot of New Zealanders who are not able to afford the cost of taking on FreeView. Many of them also have Sky anyway and have had it for some years. They have been willing to pay. TVNZ needs to think about that but still it goes to the Government as it just did in the last weeks of last year. 
There are some reports of TVNZ going to Te Mangai Paho wondering why Te Mangai Paho was starting to be a bit tough on its plans for Maori programming. I will never forget the day—and my colleague referred to this—when representatives of TVNZ came into the Maori Affairs Committee and had a list of programmes that they thought fitted the Maori remit. One TVNZ person referred to programmes about Maori being in jail and about a Maori family buying a house on  
Location Location Location 
. It was absolutely ridiculous. No doubt  
Dancing with the Stars 
 qualifies because there are some Maori dancing on there.