Tisch Lindsay: Broadcasting Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Tisch Lindsay: Broadcasting Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14669] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 As Jonathan Coleman has said National will support this bill. It is not a big bill; it has only 16 clauses. If we take out the title clause the commencement clause and clause 3 “Principal Act amended” which are three clauses out of 16 the substance of this bill is very very small. As the previous speaker Paul Swain has said the bill is needed at this stage but it is probably 10 years behind the times and we accept that. However National supports this bill as it is a move in the right direction. 
The Commerce Committee received only two submissions on the bill and we received advice from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage which did not recommend any changes to the bill as presented at the first reading. It said that the bill stood as it was and that there were no changes to be made. Subsequently we see at the second reading stage the bill that was first introduced back in September of last year. 
The bill provides that funding will be available for a much larger range of digital programming including programming on the Internet mobile phones and video on demand. That is important because we need to keep up to speed with funding for Maori television and this is one way in which that will be achieved. It also allows for funding for the archiving of Maori culture and language programming. Currently the Broadcasting Act allows for Te Mangai Paho and New Zealand On Air to fund only programmes for television and this is where the change comes. With other media and the way in which technology has moved over the years this bill will move in the right space. It will allow for rapid advancements in technology and that is what we support. However we want to ensure that the funding content will be available to all of the public and not just to certain sections. 
One question we will ask during the Committee stage is how widely this funding will be available. It needs to be available to all of the public no matter where they live whether it is through analog television the Internet or FreeView. We would of course be concerned if this funding was used for programming that could be viewed through only say pay-per-view or cellphone platforms and we would hold the Government to account on that issue. So that is one of the questions we will be asking in the Committee stage. We want to make sure that everybody will have access to this funding and that it is not available just through pay-per-view or cellphone platforms. 
Another thing that does not help Television New Zealand is its charter and Jonathan Coleman mentioned this earlier on. What has it achieved over the years? It is meaningless. Its objectives cannot be measured. What will come out of the charter review? We will want to see what happens with regard to these questions. It has been mentioned that there are programmes that would meet the criteria for Maori television. It was mentioned for example at the Maori Affairs Committee last year that programmes like  
Location Location Location 
 and  
Police Ten 7 
 satisfy the requirements for Maori programming. I was not on the Maori Affairs Committee so I do not know but I wonder whether the old programmes I used to watch such as  
I Love Lucy 
  
Mister Ed 
 and  
Bonanza 
 might be suitable programmes. [ 
Interruption 
] I am sure that there are plenty of programmes that we could identify with. 
The public should be worried about all the taxpayer money going into FreeView and Television New Zealand’s new channels. What is the Minister’s plan to make these channels succeed? Those are the questions we will be asking during the Committee of the whole House. It is interesting that although Television New Zealand has had its challenges over a number of years—and Jonathan Coleman mentioned that revenues have fallen viewership has fallen and those sorts of things—in the area that I represent in Matamata we have a television station and members of this House have been on its programmes. In fact this channel which is now known as tvCentral has been so successful that it has expanded to take in the whole of the Waikato into Rotorua Hamilton and parts of the Bay of Plenty. 
Now there is lesson there that the Minister might like to pick up on. We have seen that a private enterprise which has had to go out there and source its funding has been able to expand over the last few years and has been very successful in doing so. Yet here we have a Government agency that has great difficulty with funding with improving its viewership and with achieving the credibility that a Government-funded television station should have. Once again we will be asking a lot of questions during the Committee stage. 
National supports this bill. We believe that it is a move in the right direction even though it has been a long time coming. It is a unique opportunity for us to fund those important things in Maori television and also the cultural side. During the bill’s next stage our side of the House will be asking a lot of questions to make sure we are satisfied in our own minds that this will be money well spent. We really want to know what the Government’s intention will be in terms of broadcasting because at this stage it certainly has fallen very short of what one’s expectations and the public’s expectations should be of publicly funded television.