Broadcasting (New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho Reporting Requirements) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Broadcasting (New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho Reporting Requirements) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to consider the bill.

Before I begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge some people, those people who have actually assisted me in the drafting of this bill: current and former National advisers Finn Stichbury and James Meager, as well as my personal adviser, Matthew Ian Stephens. They, alongside the Table Office team led by Matthew Louwrens, were a great assistance in the development of this member’s bill’s concept and design.

The Broadcasting (New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho Reporting Requirements) Amendment Bill would require New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho, as the main two funding agencies of public broadcasting content in Aotearoa, to provide data publicly as to the performance and viewership of the programming they fund every quarter. Many smaller productions with limited budgets do not have the funds to gain this data themselves through third parties such as the Nielsen people meters and what have you, and often they do not have the authority or the status to demand for this data to be given to them by the agencies themselves if they have collected this data. I should know; I used to be one of those little minnows in the television industry. I believe it is important—[Interruption] It is true. I was one of those little minnows who actually wanted the viewership data from New Zealand On Air, but New Zealand On Air would not provide it because they never actually even collected the data because we were Sunday morning minority ethnic programming, so they never even counted how many people actually watched that programme. So it was always an issue for me and many other productions who were small, who weren’t the big players in the industry, who wanted to know so that we could do it better.

Anyway, I believe it is important and it is in the national interest that all New Zealanders should be able to know what the Government is funding and at what cost, and what viewership the programmes, in fact, have and draw in terms of the attention. At the present time, only some data is disclosed publicly. The data that is currently available has usually been disclosed in a six-monthly ministerial report and the official annual report that they are currently required to disclose. However, they do not disclose all current information, such as most of their viewership or tracking data figures, citing commercial sensitivity. The rest is consigned to the realm of Official Information Act (OIA) requests, which, naturally, can be misleading or have significant data withheld—again, citing commercial sensitivity or another part of section 9 of the OIA—making such an attempt to gain the data inherently a red herring.

My member’s bill will involve the publication, where relevant, of the television ratings, radio ratings, and online views, among many other reporting tools, alongside the breakdown of costs associated with the funding, and it would require this information quarterly. This bill would ensure that television shows, visual online media, and non - music-based radio programming would be reported on and tracked to safeguard public funds for appropriate content that New Zealanders care about, while also encouraging better funding analysis by the agencies before projects are confirmed and/or renewed. In doing so, I would expect that we would see for ourselves what the state of public broadcasting is truly like in our country. We will be able to see what actual trends are surrounding programming that is unlikely to be supported outside of the State through Crown agencies New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho contributing a boost or the full production costs.

Some may feel and have concern that this bill actually threatens the programming of a non-commercial nature; that, you know, it only relies on high viewership. But having said that, it’s just a ridiculous argument, because how does one compare 6 o’clock or watershed programming versus Sunday morning ethnic programming, for example? The viewership numbers will be very, very different. So it is not purely about numbers.

One of the things when I was producing the programmes was that sometimes the time slots were wrong. If New Zealand On Air believed in the programme and went as far as to fund a programme for the ethnic communities, why was it slotted at 8.30 on a Sunday morning when there weren’t too many people up in the morning to watch the programming? One of the things that we used to argue as producers was that perhaps there should be some responsibility put to the broadcasters so that these programmes that are funded by Te Māngai Pāho or funded by New Zealand On Air should be put on better time slots so that they will be accessible by more people. Broadcasters’ decisions on when the programme is scheduled in terms of time slot has a big impact on the viewership numbers.

It is important that New Zealanders get value for their tax dollars, and a key point of this bill would give an incentive to New Zealand’s taxpayers to run broadcasting funders to think carefully about the initial funding and/or future funding of content in a way that encourages better alignment with the market trends, meaningful content creation, better Kiwi storytelling, better coverage of regional news, quality journalism, and better reflection of the diversity that makes up New Zealand as a nation. To try and actually say “Oh, we have an Asian person appearing on Shortland Street.” is really not the broadcaster’s answer to ethnic diversity. “We have a shopkeeper appearing on Shortland Street.”—that really doesn’t actually answer the question we have. It’s stereotyping, and there should be more programming that actually caters to diverse audiences.

Tracking them—often these funders, New Zealand On Air, they do a great job. Te Māngai Pāho, they do a great job. Having said that, they should really track them—not just fund them; track their performances. Often it’s not just about viewership numbers but how they can improve audience numbers, because they really believe in the programme—that is the reason why they funded it in the first place.

The bill also acknowledges the innovation of the digital sector, with new multimedia platforms now also being funded through New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho. There are more platforms being funded. Viewership no longer just means tracking broadcasting on the small screen or the traditional television screens. YouTube, Facebook, Google Video—there are so many other platforms, and our funders are funding them. But the viewership numbers or the performance is actually not being measured, and this is what I would like to actually happen.

This is actually about transparency. This is about information. This is about tracking the performance and the success; and if it’s actually reaching 1,000 viewership only, it could be considered a success, because that was always about that small minority audience in the television sector. So it is actually about whether this funded programme performs and achieves its goal as it was intended. At the moment, I do not believe that New Zealand On Air nor Te Māngai Pāho actually do this, and what I would like is transparency.

In conclusion, this bill is about New Zealand being secure in the decision made by Crown agencies that the public and the Ministers have no day-to-day control over it. It creates public oversight. The bill is about transparency, as I said, it is about openness, and it is about New Zealanders having the confidence in themselves and our broadcasters to make good public broadcasting decisions for New Zealand audiences. I hope to have the support of this House. There was some support and there were some who actually said that they weren’t going to support, but, hopefully, having actually listened to what I’ve just said, and the reason why I actually put this in the ballot for members’ bills, I would urge the members to reconsider, if they weren’t going to support, to potentially support this. I hope to have the support of this House to take the bill to committee and hear the voices of stakeholders, citizens, and broadcasters as we continue this important discussion about the future of the Government’s role in the broadcasting sector. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker, nō reira tuatahi e tika ana ki te mihi ki ngā mate, ngā mate huhua o te wā, moe mai, koutou anō i mate ai i a Whakaari, moe mai, moe mai koutou. Koutou e huihui mai nei i haere mai nei mō te kaupapa i tēnei rā, tēnā anō koutou katoa.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker, and so firstly it is appropriate to acknowledge the dead, the many dead of this time, rest in peace, you who died at Whakaari / White Island, rest in peace, rest in peace. You who are gathered here and who came for today’s agenda, greetings also to you all.]

Listening to the previous speaker, I’m somewhat confused by that kōrero. Of course, many in the public are also very confused with what Melissa Lee is talking about, because, as she quite rightly said, she fronted Asia Downunder and produced Asia Downunder. I thought she was a terrific presenter and it was a terrific show, and she probably should have stayed in that line of work, because the programme was a big benefactor in terms of taxpayer dollars, and rightfully so; I have no problems with that.

But I think with this type of bill, that type of show is threatened—absolutely threatened—because for some reason, Melissa Lee needs to hear every single thing that’s happening. Through Asia Downunder we had perspectives that we never would have got if we were watching mainstream. It was such a great show. It was needed and it was perfect in terms of what was happening in terms of New Zealand society. It was the type of show that deserved to be funded. Under this bill, I don’t believe that that type of show would be funded again.

As I said, so many of the public or people who critique media are confused by this bill. I just read the chair of the public campaign group Better Public Media, Dr Peter Thompson, who said it was ironic that Melissa Lee received millions of taxpayers’ dollars to make Asia Downunder, but now wants to change the law in what he described as an attack on low-rating public media content. These are our people who are critiquing us and overseeing us all the time.

Russell Brown, on his Public Address blog, noted that New Zealand On Air is committed by law to funding programmes for various niche audiences, which can’t sensibly be measured simply by commercial ratings, and some are funded precisely because they would not be made in a wholly commercial system. Melissa Lee knows this—Melissa Lee knows this—so I’m wondering what is driving this bid to suddenly have our groups, New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho, reporting every five minutes. There’s no need for it, and, in fact, I’ve heard Mike Hosking use the same type of rhetoric. And the Hosking rhetoric is that if it doesn’t rate, get rid of it.

Sadly, I’m hearing that same type of kōrero from Melissa Lee, in a roundabout way. I acknowledge what she has said in terms of a lot of our programmes being put into prime time. In fact, her programme should have been put into prime time; in fact, my programme should have been put into prime time. I’ll take that opportunity to promote my programme, which went for six years. It went for six years, Eye to Eye with Willie Jackson, and it was promoted by New Zealand On Air, and, again, Melissa Lee makes the point, it was put on at times where the audience should have been a lot bigger, but these types of programmes are always put in ghettoised hours. We have a bit of a change now with Q+A now being put on a Monday evening, but her point about those programmes and audiences is valid.

But then she has confused the situation by saying “I need to know. I need to know.” I cannot recall Melissa Lee—when I was looking back and reading, I didn’t read anywhere where Melissa Lee was publicly protesting about this issue when she was fronting and producing Asia Downunder. I can’t recall that; I just recall programme after programme after programme coming out, in terms of Asia Downunder, putting, rightfully, an Asian perspective on things.

The brief of New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho is very clear. New Zealand On Air is designated to reflect the New Zealand identity, to give a New Zealand perspective, to support people who have ideas and dreams, and who want to give a perspective that they would not get in terms of mainstream. We must support that agenda and that kaupapa always. This bill endangers that kaupapa. We can’t commit that agency to an area where ratings, ratings, ratings are the emphasis. The problem with what Melissa Lee is saying is that it epitomises the National Party view that the commercial side of things is the only area that counts. That’s the problem with this view.

In terms of Te Māngai Pāho, Te Māngai Pāho’s brief is Māori language and Māori culture—Māori language and Māori culture. The last thing that Māori television and Māori radio should be worrying about is ratings. If you were to take Melissa Lee’s bill, you would, sadly, sometimes, and I don’t mind admitting it, find under the ratings formula, as Melissa Lee knows—it’s a strange sort of formula, how they work it all out. If you were to attach that to some Māori programmes, some Māori radio shows—not my radio show that was going for a few years, but a lot of radio shows, Māori TV shows—at the end of the day, the audience is actually zero. It is actually zero. That’s how things work out. It probably was the same with Asia Downunder. So, again, under Melissa Lee’s bill you would probably have to close the show down and close the agency down. That’s how dangerous this bill is.

So I know that Melissa Lee is talking about different things within her kōrero today, but I think it masks the fact that the driver behind this bill is this: are these agencies really doing the business in terms of ratings? Are they commercially viable? Those are the dangers that we’re looking at today—those are the dangers that we are looking at today. So if you haven’t guessed, Melissa, Labour’s not supporting this bill. I think you might have guessed that.

I’m looking forward to Clare Curran’s contribution. She has made a huge contribution in terms of broadcasting in this country. We’re not supporting it because it doesn’t support New Zealanders. It doesn’t support New Zealanders; it supports the Mike Hosking - type view of life, and the National Party view, that only ratings count. In terms of where we’re going in society, the commercial side of things is tremendously important.

So I just want us to take stock here, for a moment, because within Māori media, I know a lot of Māori radio providers are very nervous—they don’t have Māori television because they don’t want to be judged in terms of the ratings exercise. It’s another way for them to be judged. So I’m saying we have to take stock and realise that this Government has already put a $15 million investment into Radio New Zealand and New Zealand On Air to start producing more content, including a fund to promote cooperation between the two, and we’ve announced $4 million worth of projects in terms of children’s news, Pasifika, and Asian storytelling. That’s where the dollars and the investment must go. We don’t need any more accountability areas in terms of New Zealand On Air and Te Māngai Pāho. The reportage is enough; the accountability is enough. When you get a programme, you have to give a producer’s report, you have to give a stocktake, you have to give a financial report—everything is already in place—and if you want to get the ratings, you can get the ratings.

So, sadly, today, we can’t support this bill because, well, it’s just not a very good bill—it would act against the interests in terms of all New Zealanders. So I have to put that forward today, but all the best, still, to Melissa Lee. Kia ora āno tātou katoa.

Look, I’m very pleased and proud to stand in support of Melissa Lee’s bill. I actually think it does achieve some very important goals. I couldn’t understand why the Hon Willie Jackson can’t understand it, and then I discovered, halfway through his speech, that he was talking about things that aren’t even in the bill. He’s talking about testing a programme’s, or station’s, commerciality. This is not about that. What this is about is testing the viewers’ or listeners’ value which they give to content. My concern is that if we don’t do this, then we lock up taxpayer funding in programmes that, basically, only really get tested by a producer’s report, instead of, actually, the recipients, the listeners, and the viewers of that content.

What that means is that other people out there in the community who have content that they want to present—perhaps they are a budding communications person or broadcaster that’s come through, you know, the New Zealand Broadcasting School in Christchurch—can’t get in in terms of having some programme funded, because it’s locked up. I think what this does is it analyses, in a very orthodox way, the public’s value and appreciation and support for content. If those reports are done and publicised as the bill suggests, then perhaps there is some content out there that does not receive public support—that the public do not appreciate and do not value—and that becomes an opportunity for somebody else. You know, it creates some tense, competitive environment, and I think that sometimes broadcasters don’t like that. What it does is it then creates an opportunity for somebody else to come in and improve. Competition is all about quality, it’s all about getting better value for money, and, you know, I’m always worried that people aren’t prepared to quantify or assess their value. When we stopped counting elective surgeries, we lost 4,000 operations in a year. You count what you consider to be of value. You monitor that which you want to get a positive response from the public.

So, in my closing comments, I fully support this. I think it’s a very good bill. I want to commend Melissa Lee for putting the work and the effort behind it. This will happen in time. It’s probably not going to happen under this Government, but I think it’s a very good bill. I think that we want transparency and accountability in our country, and this is a great opportunity. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, last Thursday, I gave a speech in the House on the Education and Training Bill, where I referenced Clarence Beeby, who is known as the father of modern education and was the Director-General of Education in 1939. He said, “Every person, whatever the level of his academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has the right, as a citizen, to a free education of a kind for which he is best suited and to the fullest extent of his powers.” Later that afternoon, Dan Bidois, I think it was, tweeted out the big reveal that he had uncovered the true underpinning of that piece of legislation, which was socialism—socialism—as if it was a big reveal.

I just want to say today that this bill demonstrates, quite clearly, that there is a huge divide between the National Party and this side of the House. Speaking as a member of the Labour Party today, this utterly reflects that the National Party has not got a clue about what public good means. They seem to think that it’s all about measurement and economic value for money. According to their measure, if you live in a geographically outlying part of the country, if you’re part of a minority group, and if you are not a mainstream member of society, then you are not of value in terms of receiving content that is directed at you, because using ratings as a measure of value for content is going to create a mainstream, homogenous culture where content is not different. It does not reflect our country, and this is a fundamental difference between the two sides of this House. It’s something that the people of New Zealand do not respect, actually, and it’s extremely unfortunate.

I read an article a couple of weeks ago—it was in, I think, the The Timaru Herald—titled “The mind boggles at what aliens would think of life on earth”. I’ll quote from it briefly. It said, “Well, if they had any sense”—and this is if aliens came to Earth and were thinking of taking over—“(and one can presume that if they have the intelligence to successfully travel many millions of kilometres across the universe, they have a modicum of brainpower), they’d have a quick look at our TV news bulletins and hightail it back to their improbable-looking flying saucers. After all, why would they want to conquer a world that by common agreement among most scientists is entering its death throes, while a vast proportion of the most influential part of the present resident population simply shrug and return to watching reality TV.”

Well, according to Melissa Lee’s bill, which would ultimately use ratings as a measure, this is the kind of thing we’d be getting more of—Married at First Sight, The Bachelor, The Block, Love Island—because this is what commercial ratings delivers to us. Instead, what the Government proposed, when it invested $15 million more investment into content for New Zealanders, was that there was an instruction to Radio New Zealand and New Zealand On Air, not on exactly what that content would be but that its priorities were spelt out that they were to promote diversity, and that was in terms of Māori, Pacific Island, other ethnicities, geographical diversity, young people, local government, people living in every community in New Zealand.

No matter what their age, no matter what their background, and no matter what their ethnicity, they would feel that their stories were being told, their faces were being reflected, and that their place, whether physical or geographical—their sense of place in this country—was being valued. That is what we want to promote in this country, and not use ratings as a measure of success. “Ratings is a very blunt instrument for measuring success.”, said New Zealand On Air recently. Well, we cannot commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I’d like to begin my contribution by firstly acknowledging those who have been impacted, the families and the victims of the terrible tragedy off Whakatāne of the Whakaari / White Island eruption, and, I also, too, note our news media, who have been covering the story for us as it unfolds, and the work that those broadcasters—

I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but we have come to the end of the extended sitting.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 1 p.m. (Wednesday)