Davis Kelvin: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDavis Kelvin: Radio New Zealand Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:10081. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Like the Greens the Labour Party believes in a well-funded high-quality independent public broadcasting service and it also supports this bill.One of the first things that popped out to me as I was going through the notes for this reading was that it said that Radio New Zealand’s funding has been frozen at $31.8 million since the 2008-09 financial year. I thought “Oh crikey I had better just check that that is still the case.” So I gave Clare Curran a call and went and had a conversation with her and I said: “Look you’ve said this in 2013-14—that the funding had been frozen at $31.8 million—tell me that’s still not the case.” And unfortunately Clare did say to me: “Yes Kelvin that is the case now 7 years later.” So 2 years after those comments had been made in the 2013-14 financial review it is still the case that the funding has been frozen at $31.8 million. In that financial review Radio New Zealand said cost-cutting could not go on much longer and it would have to seriously look at cutting back on core functions in the near future if its situation did not change.Reading this morning’s Dominion Post I came across this article in the business section. It says that creeping erosion makes Kiwis poorer. This article is talking about Kiwi families but it could equally be applied to organisations that rely on Government funding. The first sentence says: “There’s a quiet force eroding the financial lives of many New Zealanders.” It could equally say “There’s a quiet force eroding the financial viability of some New Zealand organisations.” It says: “in the name of making other government spending sustainable some money limits on other government programmes remain unchanged as wages and prices march on trimming spending in real terms without politicians having to talk about cuts.” That could equally be applied to Radio New Zealand. The members on the other side there can put their hands on their hearts and say in all honesty “We have not made any cuts to Radio New Zealand funding.” and in a dollar amount that would actually be the case—but in terms of real spending they have received cuts.The Children’s Commissioner told Parliament—now you can substitute “Children’s Commissioner” here with the “chair of Radio New Zealand Richard Griffin” or the “chief executive officer Paul Thompson”—about the freezing of his baseline funding since the 2010 financial year. He said: “One can only stretch a rubber band so far.” And the same applies to Radio New Zealand. You can only stretch a rubber band so far before there is going to be an erosion of the quality of the content or there is going to be an erosion of something: to the extent now that we have heard that the problem is so bad that this year Richard Griffin will not even be making a Budget bid to increase the funding for Radio New Zealand. Has he given up? I am not sure of the reason but why would a chairperson not put in a Budget bid for increased funding for his organisation? He has probably just thrown his hands up in the air and given up all hope.But let us not detract from the great job that Radio New Zealand does do. As I walked into the House I heard Mr Hudson from the other side talking about some of the ways that Radio New Zealand has targeted new audiences: radionz.co.nz had 1284171 users and 5 million page views in the month of February 2016. So in 29 days it had 5 million page views—that is almost as popular as Stuart Nash’s Facebook page; thewireless.co.nz had 83586 users and 141660 page views. In online audio—again in February 2016—Radio New Zealand had over 1.148 million unique downloads. That is something like 40000 unique downloads a day. It also had 163738 requests for on-demand audio—that is 5½ thousand requests a day. And 108431 requests for livestreams—that is 3700 requests for livestreams a day. So Radio New Zealand is trying to target new audiences using all the technology that is there.Radio New Zealand is highly regarded by New Zealanders including non-listeners by the way. Eighty-seven percent agree that it is important for New Zealand to have a public service radio broadcaster and only 4 percent disagree with that. So 87 percent agree and 4 percent disagree—I guess the others in between do not know. Eighty percent agree that Radio New Zealand provides a valuable service for New Zealanders and only 4 percent disagree. So when we look at its performance against its current charter—and remember that this bill is about getting a new charter for it. A recent survey asked listeners “How much do you agree or disagree?” about Radio New Zealand and whether they “promote informed debate?” and 89 percent agreed that it promotes informed debate. Only 1 percent disagreed—the others are neither here nor there—but 89 percent say that it promotes informed debated. It asked whether Radio New Zealand “contributes to the development of an informed society?” and 92 percent of respondents said “Yes”. There are over a thousand respondents and 92 percent believe that Radio New Zealand contributes to the development of an informed society and only 1 percent disagree. These are superb results considering that it has had frozen funding since 2008.In terms of agreeing or disagreeing with whether it provides “a range of programmes which reflect New Zealand’s cultural diversity” 85 percent agree. Do they “promote and support a sense of national identity?”. Eighty-two percent agree. The one area where I think that Radio New Zealand needs to up its game—and I personally would like to see—is that they need to “balance the need to broadcast programmes of wide appeal while also broadcasting programmes of interest to minority audiences.” Seventy-eight percent agree and 3 percent disagree. And if I can put out a plea there I would like to see more Māori broadcasting more Pacific Island languages more ethnic content and certainly not just more programming in Te Reo Māori but also more Māori-related stories.Radio New Zealand does an exceptional job despite the fact that it has had frozen funding for 7 years now. This is a quote from last year’s annual review of Radio New Zealand at the Commerce Committee: “I’d say our financials are as healthy as they possibly could be under the circumstances of a budget that hasn’t been increased in terms of Government financing for 7 years now.” It is an appalling indictment on the Government that a broadcaster that is so popular that does such a great job for New Zealanders—it broadcasts our stories it promotes national identity all of those wonderful things—has had a frozen budget since 2008-09.The Labour Party supports this bill. It is long overdue. I believe one part of the bill is that there is meant to be a review of the charter every 5 years. I think we have missed two of those reviews and it looks like the first review will not now be until 2020-21. This bill has been delayed too long and therefore we should pass it as soon as possible. Kia ora.Bill read a third time.