Rich Katherine: Television New Zealand Bill — Third Reading 
Rich Katherine: Television New Zealand Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:3868] 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: 
 There is a question that has plagued many a previous Minister of Broadcasting over the years and it is this: how does the Government create a small publicly funded publicly owned television business? I have the answer to that: give a big one to Steve Maharey and Marian Hobbs. Over the last few years we have seen the Television New Zealand company becoming a mere shell of its former self. When National left office as the Government this company was worth $1 billion. It had a terrific capability to fund a large amount of local content. As a result of the last 3 years of dawdling messing around with the business vague statements and poor management that company is no longer the jewel in the State’s crown. Once valued at $1 billion I imagine that TVNZ would probably be worth less than that now. It is fast becoming a sad flat little company.  
This bill is a backward step for broadcasting for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons is that it reintroduces politics into the broadcasting industry to a level not seen since the 1970s. By making TVNZ a Crown-owned company we will see political interference in the media on a greater scale than ever before. We have seen 3 years of dawdling to get this far. This is the fourth year that the Government has been talking about the charter and very little progress was made in the last few years. Average progress was the equivalent of less than one word a day. Marian Hobbs herself confirmed that in the last 3 years there had been little change on screen. Over the last 3 years TVNZ has lost staff. People have become burnt out as a result of some of the interference that we have already seen at TVNZ. The station itself has lost income. Advertisers became fazed by the fact that they could hear there were to be changes made to the business so that would have affected long-term advertising contracts. Of course we have seen the decimation of value that I have mentioned before.  
But in the meantime we have seen no change in what has been shown on television. Yes there have been a few shows that have been creatively described as “charter friendly” in the interim but we have seen no programming. In fact we have seen a number of arguably non - charter-friendly decisions made—such as the axing of  
Backchat 
 the axing of  
60 Minutes 
 and the appointment of a reality television manager who is charged with making more format shows than were made previously.  
How much change will we now see? If one listens to what is said by members on the Government side of the House one imagines there will be a great sea change in programming. I question how that change can happen when all that the Government has come up with is $10 million plus GST. That is not even enough to produce a historic drama; that is not even enough to add many documentaries to those we see on screen. In fact on the day when the Minister announced that $10 million plus GST Annette King came out and described a similar sum as being “a mere trickle”. I think she was probably the Minister who was being more honest about the amount that has been put behind this charter. One simply cannot produce programming with such a small amount of funding. I suspect that most members in this House support a greater level of local content. We all like to turn on the television or the radio and to see or hear stories that reflect our country. But one cannot produce that with nothing. It costs money to make those programmes and the Government simply has not backed its rhetoric with funding.  
There is another reason that we are concerned about this bill. The direct funding of TVNZ totally undermines the contestable funding process that was put in place by National. If Governments want to get involved in the purchasing of local content that can only be done fairly through a contestable method—that is by using New Zealand On Air. If the Government is to continue the direct funding of TVNZ that totally messes up the process of funding good ideas as opposed to funding individual organisations.  
Let us talk a moment about political interference. Over the last 3 years we have already seen an increase in the way that the Government has started to interfere with the programming on television. I have spoken to many people within the industry who tell me there have been many occasions when news stories in particular have been pulled because there have been concerns that if TVNZ is critical of the Government it will not be well received on the ninth floor of the Beehive. I wonder why the John Tamihere story was pulled from the TVNZ news line-up last Friday. That is not a new thing of course because there has always been a Government involvement in radio. A particular interview about radio with the then Minister Marian Hobbs on Radio New Zealand was suddenly pulled from the schedule because of its close proximity to the last election. That was quite an interesting interview in itself. Marian Hobbs confirmed a number of things. She confirmed that TVNZ already in effect had a charter within its statement of corporate intent—something that I had argued for a long time. She also confirmed that there had been very little change in the programmes scheduled during the previous 3 years but more important she told the country what the real plan for TVNZ was.  
The Government’s real plan is to turn TVNZ into the Radio New Zealand of the television world. I remind members that the listenership of Radio New Zealand usually sits at between 5 and 10 percent—10 percent on a good day. At the moment over 70 percent of New Zealand viewers tune into TVNZ programmes. It is a mainstream medium which serves a wide range of New Zealanders. So increasingly if there is a move to minority-channel programming which is the express aim of this charter we will see a decline in viewership.  
The next point is that it is not clear how compliance with the charter is to be measured. The Minister can say that he thinks the charter provides a clear set of objectives but I question whether he has actually read it. If one reads the charter one learns it is all about motherhood and apple pie—just statements about how we want to see diversity on television a wide range of programming and about how we are supposed to have programmes that reflect all sorts of New Zealanders. We know that that was already in TVNZ’s statement of corporate intent. But the question is how that will be measured. The public has an expectation that it will be measured independently but that is not the case. TVNZ will decide how it will implement the charter and then it will measure that itself. So if TVNZ decides that one charter objective is to screen one drama and it succeeds in doing that then it can tick the appropriate box. I do not think that was the intention that the public had when the Government embarked on this process.  
I think there were great expectations that we would see a huge amount more of local content on TVNZ. But one simply cannot fund that when one has declining profits a financial deterioration of the company and a small amount of funding being handed over by the Government. A further point on political interference is that if TVNZ is to have to go cap in hand to the Government every year to get funding how will it be really objective about the performance of this Government? The truth is that TVNZ cannot be objective. TVNZ will be so nervous that money will be withheld from it that it will be more than cautious when it comes to developing its programmes.  
The other ironic thing in all this is that this legislation has been written and is being implemented by a bunch of people who do not even watch television who do not even have a love of television and who I am sure think spin doctors are just a subcommittee of the “Burns unit”. Probably they have not sat down and watched what most Kiwis like to watch in a very long time. 
Hon Roger Sowry 
: Do your  
Kath and Kim 
 impersonation! 
KATHERINE RICH 
: I will not; I will leave that for later. But I would say that members on the Government side of the House probably do not even know who Kath and Kim are. They probably think they are press secretaries for Marian Hobbs!  
We all want to see good quality television on screen but the point is that one cannot continue to produce programming if one does not pay for it and the Government has not stumped up with the cash for it.