Swain Paul: Broadcasting Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Swain Paul: Broadcasting Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14668] 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I rise to support the Broadcasting Amendment Bill which everyone agrees with. It says that the Broadcasting Commission can fund programming that appears not just on television but in a wide range of formats and everybody knows that is a sensible thing to do. I will ignore the slightly uncharitable comments that the Minister of Broadcasting made about my time as Minister of Communications and say that this is just a little nibble at a much bigger issue that will in time come back to this Parliament. 
One of the sensible things the Minister said was about convergence. It is a huge issue around the world and it is something that I hope the continued Labour-led Government can grapple with. It is a problem that only a Labour-led Government can grapple with because it is so complex and so difficult. If it was left to members of a Tory Government I am sure they would not get the concept to start with and if they did I am sure they would want to compartmentalise it. 
The real issue is that in this century we have a number of regulatory models. We have a Broadcasting Commission and other institutions that regulate broadcasting and television. We have a Telecommunications Commissioner who regulates telecommunications and we have an Electricity Commission which regulates electricity but potentially there will be a time when telecommunications go down electricity lines. It will interesting to see whether the Telecommunications Commissioner or the Electricity Commission will regulate that. 
Then we have the Internet. There is a strong international push to ensure that it is not regulated. The nature of the Internet is such that people want it to be unregulated and free of international intervention to keep the spirit of it. Net neutrality is one of the big issues in the United States and also Europe to ensure that content is not restricted by for example telecommunications network providers which may want to put their own content down at the expense of someone else’s. 
So we have a huge number of issues where a number of regulatory regimes are all trying to deal with a problem and that raises the issue of whether broadcasting can be regulated at all. When we start to see different types of broadcasting formats whether they be cellphone the Internet television or potentially as I said down an electricity line it raises huge issues about how Governments will deal with the issue of convergence. Although it goes without saying that the Broadcasting Amendment Bill slowly brings Parliament into the 21st century— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It’s more the late 20th! 
Hon PAUL SWAIN 
: Well the late 20th yes—we are probably at least 10 years behind but that is often the way of this place when it comes to new technology. 
The real issue that Parliament will have in the future is how it deals with the range of mediums and how they will be regulated. Parliament will have to decide whether to have a single regulator which some countries are trying to head toward—one regulator that deals with all these formats—or whether there will continue to be a range of different types of regulatory regimes and in the end whether one can ultimately regulate things like the Internet which people are saying the Government should keep its sticky hands out of. 
This tiny little bill is pretty simple and I imagine everybody will support it because it legislates for a necessity. It raises a huge issue about convergence. It is an issue that all international agencies in my experience from having travelled around the world are grappling with. No one has the answer. Everyone is trying to deal with it in a different way. Given the nature of the Internet and telecommunications its internationalisation and its ability to flow across borders there will have to be a way to deal with this issue. It will be a huge issue. It will be something that Parliament has to deal with in the future. To future Ministers of Broadcasting Ministers of Communications and Ministers of Energy I say that these are matters that will tax their minds as we move into a much more complex broadcasting arrangement. 
I support this legislation but I think this will not be the last time that we deal with the simple little issue in this bill. The next bills that will potentially come back will be much more complex for Parliament to deliver. During that period I will be watching from the sideline urging members on and I will possibly be thankful that this issue which I grappled with in 2001 is left to finer minds than mine.