Marcroft JennyBROADCASTING (NEW ZEALAND ON AIR AND TE MĀNGAI PĀHO REPORTING REQUIREMENTS) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 10 December 2019.JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you Mr Speaker. The media in New Zealand is in crisis. In fact the media around the globe around the world is in crisis and there are two ways it is in crisis: it is in a crisis of trust and there's also a crisis of the economic model. What has happened over the last few years is that we have a disruptor that's come into the media landscape. We have a global disruptor—Facebook and Google—and they have sucked the advertising revenue from our local broadcasters and that is crashing the economic model the business model of our media broadcasters.Through the use of Facebook and the like people are seeing their news gathering their news from sources that are not our traditional broadcasters and a lot of what they are seeing is clickbait stories fake news and that has created a lack of trust in the media. When there's a lack of trust in the media that absolutely erodes our democracy. It is really important that we ensure that our media are trustworthy and we ensure our media are robust and are—the fourth estate—one of the pillars of our democracy. That's why I'm really passionate about broadcasting. My career of 30 years led me to this House just a couple of years ago. The media currently has a really important role to play with COVID-19; a role in ensuring the public have the right information so that there is not hysteria and pandemonium because of clickbait headlines. That's the sort of background of where we're at with our media at the moment. So I turn now to the bill the Broadcasting (New Zealand on Air and Te Māngai Pāho Reporting Requirements) Amendment Bill.New Zealand On Air is our funding agency along with Te Māngai Pāho who funds our Māori broadcasters—that's Māori Television and iwi radio or Māori radio. There are 21 Māori radio stations in our network. The problem that I have with this bill is that it has no objective. It simply requires New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho to collect vast amounts of information and somehow report every three months on that vast amount of data that they gather. It really is bureaucracy gone mad and it will put a handbrake on New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho getting on with the job.One of the important things that Te Māngai Pāho and New Zealand On Air are currently doing is they are working away providing programmes to be made to ensure that we increase our content of Te Reo Māori on air so that we are able to reach out to our communities to have Te Reo Māori accessed by more people. This bill won't help any of that. This literally is gathering data for the sake of gathering data and when we have a media ecosystem where we have linear TV which is in decline we have people listening to the radio although the audiences still remain strong and stable and then we have digital platforms where people are accessing content as well—it will be very difficult to gather up that data when for example a video goes up on an on-demand channel. Maybe it's TV1 OnDemand or ThreeNow and over what period of time will you gather that data to see how many people have watched that particular programme? They'll tap in on demand when they want to see it not necessarily by appointment-viewing that we traditionally have—for example with the 6 o'clock news or Coronation Street.So the gathering of the data here is all well and good but there will be no meaningful analysis which would make it worthwhile to do. So I think generally of the fact that our media ecosystem is so challenged at the moment and we're working on strong and important ways of what we should do about particularly our public broadcasters at the moment to ensure that they survive not just now but into the future. I therefore feel that we have as a coalition Government a lot of work to do that matters in the broadcasting space and we shouldn't waste any time on this bill.