Speech: Curran - Television New Zealand Amendment Bill
new-zealand-labour-party
Fri May 06 2011 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Speech: Curran - Television New Zealand Amendment Bill
Friday, 6 May 2011, 10:16 am
Speech: New Zealand Labour Party
3 May 2011
Clare Curran’s speech on the Television New Zealand Amendment Bill
Mr Speaker this Bill represents three things that this government is becoming renowned for:
Weakness, Cronyism and dodginess.
The weakness of this Minister in not having any real plan for public broadcasting in this country other than to get rid of it. If he did have plan then he’s been rolled. He’s a weak Minister. This legislation is a disgrace. His approach to public broadcasting is a disgrace and he’s a waste of space.
The weakness of the Prime Minister and Ministers, including the Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman in kowtowing to pressure by corporate media to bail them out, while seeing off the important role of public broadcasting
It’s cronyism at its worst. TVNZ stripped of its Charter, its public interest role. TVNZ7 axed. The new innovative digital channel. Gone. Gone. While at the same time this government hands over a $43 million loan to its corporate mate MediaWorks, which runs TV3 and some influential radio stations
And it’s an election year. Go figure
Mr Speaker Labour is emphatically opposed to the TVNZ Amendment Bill. We’re opposed to replacing the TVNZ Charter with a statement of functions.
We’re opposed to this Minister instructing TVNZ that they are no longer a public broadcaster, that instead they are a commercial broadcaster. That was earlier this year. Well before this Bill has been enacted. While the Charter is still in force.
Let me tell you what TVNZ said: on 7 April to the Commerce Committee.
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In response to a question from me about they believe that Television New Zealand is a commercial broadcaster or a public service broadcaster?
The Chair Rick Ellis said: The shareholder, the Government, has made it clear that our primary mandate is to be a commercial broadcaster—a commercially successful company. The announcements that the Minister made yesterday, with respect to TVNZ 7, I think give weight to that. Our primary focus is to be a commercial broadcaster, commercially successful… a successful commercial entity.
He said the Minister visited the Board in March and expressed this view.
So TVNZ has been instructed to prioritise commercial functions and hence neglect the Charter.
This is well before the Charter has been abolished.
Instead the Charter hasn’t yet been abolished. It’s supposed to be abolished in this TVNZ Amendment Bill, it currently remains in statutory force. Which is only going through its second reading today. It is not yet in force.
TVNZ is supposed to be still abiding by the Charter, but this government has blatantly disregarded the law as it stands because it’s already made the decision to axe it.
This raises some very interesting questions about whether the Government has acted unlawfully in instructing a Crown company through policy to act in a manner that contravenes its statutory functions.
Who was the last Prime Minister to do that? Muldoon that’s who. Who made decisions he contravened laws and then changed the law to give his decisions validity.
Consider the legal precedent of Fitzgerald vs Muldoon in the 1970s, then surely, this is another case of the executive assuming the powers of the legislature; powers which he does not have.
That’s dodgy.
And I’ll tell you what else is dodgy: Jonathan Coleman claims the government did not receive any proposal from TVNZ regarding the possibility of funding TVNZ 6/7 with commercial revenues from TV1 and TV2.
However Labour understands that TVNZ did consider this but because of the demand for increased dividends, it was not possible.
TVNZ told us in the select committee that they approached the government with a proposal to keep TVNZ7 going. Jonathan Coleman has denied that. Who’s telling the truth? Perhaps the Minister could answer that.
We also understand the government was instructing TVNZ to operate, in effect, as a state-owned enterprise and return dividends at a rate of 9 percent, even though the ‘risk free rate’ was apparently only 6.4 percent.
Yet where in the Charter (below) does it say that TVNZ is required to return a dividend of nine percent, and that requirement takes precedence over all other clauses in this Charter?
If there is such a clause, I challenge the Minister to read it to the House now.
And to take the cake Mr Speaker we also understand that on one of the many occasions when Jonathan Coleman has attended board meetings with Media works that the future of TVNZ7 was not only discussed, but that a strong message was delivered to him by the board to get rid of it.
Given that he subsequently did get rid of it and that MediaWorks were handed a cool $43 million loan to defer payment on their spectrum licences, just how did MediaWorks get to exert so much pressure on this government?
Perhaps the Minister would also like to answer this.
Did he discuss the future of TVNZ7 with the board of MediaWorks? What was the nature of those discussions? And what message was delivered to him. Was it a strong message? Was it a get rid of TVNZ7 or else message?
He’s certainly met with the board of MediaWorks on many occasions. Nine times to be precise between 9 December 2008 and the end of last year. Not sure how many times this year, perhaps he could tell us that. Interestingly he met with the board six times last year. That’s a lot. What did he discuss?
In the meantime, while Broadcasting Minister Coleman has been busy meeting with the board of the Commercial broadcaster, public radio broadcasting in New Zealand is in tatters following a statement by the new RadioNZ chair Richard Griffin that he’s going to move our state radio broadcaster towards commercialisation.
He says RadioNZ won’t become a commercial product but in the next breath revealed he is open to sponsorship of some radio programmes at the state broadcaster even if a law change is needed.
He said: “This board has got the will and determination to make it happen not just to enhance the product, but to enhance the revenue for the product”
Griffin, a former press secretary to Jim Bolger denied his appointment was political, but his agenda fits the Government’s view to strip our state broadcasters of public broadcasting functions and turn them towards cost recovery and even profit. He’s been appointed the chair after less than a year on the board.
Of his critics he says “conspiracy theories make good copy”.
Commercial sponsorship of RNZ programmes would be the first step towards full commercialisation. Radio New Zealand is the last bastion of public service broadcasting, free from corporate interests and should remain that way.
What does this all tell us? And what does this Bill that’s being put before the House today tell us? There’s a crisis in public broadcasting in NZ.
Recently More than 60 academics in NZ wrote an An open letter of concern to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Broadcasting, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, and the Minister of Finance.
They expressed concern about the closure of TVNZ 7. They said this was one more in a series of steps by the government to dismantle the little that is left of public broadcasting in our country.
Public service television is even more important in a country of such limited size. Our small population means that New Zealand’s commercialised television channels simply cannot provide the range of programming that viewers want and should be able to access in the interests of democracy as well as cultural identity.
In radio, New Zealand has a national public service network, Radio New Zealand (RNZ), and publicly-funded Maori radio stations. In television, it has two publicly-funded Maori channels (Maori TV and Te Reo) which are performing an important function – but there is no national television service equivalent to RNZ.
So while I’m at it here’s a few more questions for the Minister today
What is his response to the claims by these academics that most OECD countries have at least one public service television channel, simply because they understand the market will never fulfil this roll, and without it, the potential of television to create a better-informed society and a stronger democracy will never be realised. I understand Mexico is the only other country, other than New Zealand, that doesn’t have a public television channel.
Last week Labour called on the nation’s top thinkers, business leaders, politicians, academics and senior media industry figures to converge to discuss the future of public broadcasting and media in New Zealand. And I repeat that call today.
There’s a lot of people out there who care about public broadcasting in New Zealand. Our ability to tell our stories. Our ability to provide the public with independent critical analysis, reporting and investigation. Not owned by corporate interests.
Every democracy in the world has it. Every nation should have it. We’re losing ours.
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