Coleman Jonathan: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Coleman Jonathan: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18767] 
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Broadcasting) 
: 
 What an intellectually loose if not somewhat poisonous contribution from Labour’s soon-to-be-sacked broadcasting spokesperson. It was intellectually loose on a number of fronts. 
I checked her figures closely. She repeated a couple of times that 83000 households in New Zealand were without Sky TV. Well I think Ms Curran needs to check her facts. Then we had a long rambling discourse going through the history of New Zealand television. You know if we take 1.6 million households and we subtract the just over 800000 households that have Sky we do not get 83000. I am very surprised because that member reads laboriously and continuously from prepared notes but she does not have the wherewithal and the wit to pick up the most basic error. If she does not know the most basic fundamentals of the numbers in this whole equation how can we rely on anything else she said? 
She went on to make out that the National Government was not honest on issues of broadcasting yet she was fundamentally misleading the House—misleading the House—by trying to make out that this archiving scheme would result in all those archived works being shown on pay TV— 
Hon Rick Barker 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I thought I heard the Minister say—I could not hear it clearly because of the catcalling from the other side—that the member was deliberately misleading the House. It is wrong to say that and to accuse a member of that. If the Minister did say that then I think he should withdraw it. If he did not I accept the clarification. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I thank the member for that. The word “misleading” was certainly used but I do not think “misleading the House” was. But I just caution the Minister. The Minister is to be very careful with the use of that word. 
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: Well just like that member got the figures badly wrong about the number of houses with and without Sky TV she also got it really badly wrong in that she does not understand the fundamentals of this Television New Zealand Amendment Bill. That is the truth of it. She is telling the public and apparently this is not deliberate that this bill will free up archived works to be shown only on pay TV. Anyone who has read the bill—and I do not know whether this member has read the bill—will know that it is freeing up works that can be shown only on free-to-air television. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: How many households don’t have Sky? 
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: They can try and shout down the argument but I have the microphone. 
The other thing that is really interesting is that that member over there Clare Curran basically harangued us for doing away with TVNZ 7. I can tell members why I think she is very soon to be sacked. Phil Goff was on the radio yesterday and just like he had to sack Brendon Burns I think when he hears how his spokesperson has gone on tonight he will have to have a word with her. Phil Goff was asked yesterday how Labour felt about this bill and whether it would support it. Phil got the first bit right; he said that Labour would not support it. He was then asked whether Labour would put more money into TVNZ and whether it would save TVNZ 7. He said: “Well you know look I can’t make a whole series of promises at this time until I’ve seen the whole picture. I mean we’ve got to focus on helping people struggling with the cost of living we’ve got to get rid of that deficit and then we’ve got a series of things that we would want to do and that may include TVNZ.” 
Well is that not the point? Basically $79 million over 6 years went into that channel. The Labour Government had no idea how it was going to continue to fund it. It had made no allowance for it. It had said it would be self-funding. In the end it is not. We are left with one heck of a problem which we have solved. What would Labour members do? Would they bring it back? Will Clare Curran be stupid enough to contradict Phil Goff tonight and get up and promise that Labour would fund TVNZ 7? I challenge her to do that but I bet she will not. She would be hauled into Phil Goff’s office tomorrow if she did and told: “Sorry darling you have just added another cost another unfunded promise on to the list of what will be a very heavy load strung around our neck at the next election.” 
Fundamentally this bill brings honesty. Here is another thing Phil Goff said yesterday: “You know if we’re totally honest you have got to say it is hard to see much on TV1 that is public service.” So Phil Goff actually gets it. But of course because ideologically he is stuck in a time warp in the wrong party he has to go along with this Labour Party charade that the TVNZ charter actually did something. [ 
Interruption 
] 
We can tell by the cackle and the shouting from those members that they know they have lost this argument intellectually. They know the charter never did anything they know fundamentally they would not bring it back and they know they would not fund TVNZ 7 because they know they could not afford to. They have no intention of doing that. They had the chance to push through a regulatory review but they left it to us. They deferred it they deferred it and they deferred it because they knew that at the end of the day it was not publicly palatable. No one wanted that review. When we took power we were up front and honest about it. All they can do is criticise us for doing something they never had the guts to do themselves. So that spokesperson is totally out of step with her leader. 
This is a great bill. If Labour members had any sense they would vote for it.