SUE KEDGLEY (Green) : The Green Party will certainly not be supporting the Television New Zealand Amendment Bill, which will strip Television New Zealand (TVNZ) of any public service functions and of any public service obligations or responsibilities, and will turn it into a nakedly commercial broadcaster—in the Minister of Broadcasting’s words—indistinguishable from any other commercial broadcaster in New Zealand. It is sad to sit here and watch one of the last remaining public service broadcasters disappear, because that is what this bill will bring about. It is particularly sad when we consider the media landscape in New Zealand.

New Zealand has one of the most deregulated broadcasting environments in the world. We have no laws limiting cross-media ownership. We have no regulations restricting the amount of foreign ownership of the media, as a result of which only a handful of media outlets in New Zealand are not foreign-owned. They are the Otago Daily Times, a couple of papers on the West Coast, Radio New Zealand, TVNZ, and Māori Television. We are one of the only countries in the world that has no local content quotas, and as a result we have the lowest amount of local programming on television of any OECD country. Most of Europe has about 90 percent local content. Australia has one of the lowest rates, with only 55 percent mandatory local content. As for New Zealand, on Television One we have 10 to 20 percent local content, and there is a rapidly diminishing percentage of local content on TV2. Once this bill goes through, we will be the only country in the OECD that does not have a public service television broadcaster, and soon, no doubt, we will be the first country in the world to sell our public service television broadcaster. Obviously, that is the underlying hidden agenda here—to ready TVNZ for sale. What is the point otherwise in having a publicly owned broadcaster that has no public service functions or responsibilities whatsoever? As others have pointed out, the bill strips TVNZ of its charter, its public broadcasting responsibilities, and any pretence of having any.

The Green Party is the first to admit that the previous dual mandate of TVNZ was not a great success, but at least the charter spelt out explicitly and unequivocally that TVNZ was expected to be a public service broadcaster, to serve the public interest, and to have high-quality news and current affairs programmes, and it set out a list of programming that it was expected to have, such as drama, children’s programming, and so forth. All of this has gone, and TNVZ is simply to exist to be nakedly commercial, and focused solely on pursuing ratings and advertising revenue. Essentially it will exist to sell audiences to advertisers. Once the bill goes through Parliament, as it undoubtedly will, TVNZ will exist for the sole purpose of returning a profit and a 9 percent dividend to its shareholder, the Government. The board already has a mandate of returning a dividend at all costs, and it is looking at ways of lifting its profits by $30 million to $40 million a year, which is no small task when one considers that there was a 90 percent drop in profits last year and a $17 million fall in advertising revenue.

But with no charter in place and absolutely no requirements to screen any particular programmes, TVNZ will be able to do whatever it wishes to try to lift its profits by $30 million to $40 million. It will have, as the Minister said, complete flexibility to do whatever it wants, and no requirement to screen local programmes, documentaries, dramas, children’s programmes, or minority-interest programmes. Inevitably, therefore, we will see even fewer New Zealand programmes, less and less news and current affairs, and we probably will not see any documentaries, because those programmes are more expensive to produce. It is more expensive to produce New Zealand programmes than it is to import cheap packaged action programmes, and so forth, from overseas. So we will see less and less current affairs and news, less and less New Zealand content, and this is happening already.

Last year TVNZ slashed its budget by $25 million, made 90 staff redundant, and cut 100 hours of local programming. This year, around June I am told, it is talking of making a further 75 staff redundant. It is making savage cuts to news and current affairs by cutting 12.5 percent from the $40 million news budget. It is even talking about reducing TVNZ news broadcasts to half an hour, downgrading the Wellington and Christchurch news offices, and centralising control in Auckland. Soon we will have the Auckland news, not the New Zealand news.

Obviously this is an idiotic strategy, because 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. is considered the flagship news hour when channels compete for audience share. Slashing the news budget, as is being proposed, will inevitably reduce the quality of news and therefore people will migrate to other channels, such as TV3. TVNZ will lose audience share and, therefore, advertising and, therefore, revenue. It is an idiotic strategy. But, even leaving that aside, the reduction in news and current affairs and in New Zealand programming is an inevitable consequence of stripping TVNZ of its public service charter.

The Government is stating clearly that TVNZ should be solely focused on naked commercialism. So what we are really seeing is a return to the commercial excesses of the 1990s. This is just a rerun of the 1990s, with TVNZ solely focused on maximising returns and dividends, and being prepared for sale. It is finishing the unfinished business. In the 1990s the intention was to sell TVNZ, but it did not succeed then, so, clearly, the Government is out to finish that unfinished agenda. However, I must admit there is a problem, and the Minister has spoken about this issue in an interview. He said that the problem is there are unlikely to be any buyers out there. The value of TVNZ has dropped from $330 million to $184 million, and he lamented that if one looks at the equity, no one would want to buy it.

The question that media commentators are asking is that other than stripping TVNZ of its charter and its charter funding, and starving Radio New Zealand of its funding, what the Government’s broadcasting strategy is. The media commentator John Drinnan said that after barely a year in the job Mr Coleman has “created such a muddle”—I repeat, such a muddle—“that it is impossible to discern the direction of the Key Government’s broadcasting policy, if indeed it has one.”

The closest thing I found to the Minister discussing his strategy was when he said in an interview that now that Television One and TV2 were nakedly commercial, the plan was that people would be able to turn to TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7, the new public service channels, to get what he said most people would describe as “quality broadcasting content”. If they then flick to Television One and TV2, they would get whatever is served up.

TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 are basically not public service broadcasting channels with high-quality programming; they are niche channels. TVNZ 6 basically delivers news update repeats on Television One, and a handful of local shows. It is basically just reruns, reruns, and reruns of programmes. We cannot call that quality broadcasting. By 2012 it will have no more money. The Minister has said that its funding runs out then. There will be no more money. The Government will expect TVNZ to fund it, and TVNZ has made it plain that it will not be funding it. So the truth is that there is no broadcasting strategy. The Government does not believe in public service broadcasting.