Broadcasting (Repeal of Advertising Restrictions) Amendment Bill

I have determined that the subject of this vote will be treated as a conscience issue. In this case, I know there are members who want a personal vote, and I’m prepared to accept one. This is the process we’re going to follow: I’m going to put the question, I’m going to announce the result, and, at that stage, any member can ask for a personal vote. When we were debating this call, we were up to call No. 4—the ACT Party call.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. Thank you very much. Just to clarify the process: if a party chooses at the point when you call for a party vote, they could indicate a split vote at that point?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is my understanding.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of the Broadcasting (Repeal of Advertising Restrictions) Amendment Bill. It is the last day of Parliament, and I want to wish everybody in the House a really lovely, merry Christmas, and those viewers back at home. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to stand on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Broadcasting (Repeal of Advertising Restrictions) Amendment Bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker, for noting that this bill raises an issue of conscience and that a personal vote will be made, should people wish to do so, because, of course, for elected members, that personal vote provides a bit more freedom, in fact, to express the views of our constituents, the views of our communities that we represent.

New Zealand First stands on a conservative platform, keeping the best regulations and, in fact, avoiding the unintended consequences of deregulation. I’ll just go back to the time when the regulations in section 81 were made in the Broadcasting Act 1989—New Zealand has quite a strong Christian foundation; we have a history of it; we have heritage around Christian values. At the time, a boundary was drawn around carving out the days that are meaningful for religious observance, so having a personal vote is important. These boundaries that we draw around our working lives and our special celebrations are important, and we would be all the poorer without them.

In the last decade, we’ve seen a great migration in the way Kiwis engage in media. There’s been a migration from mainstream media to new, emerging media, a migration from traditional linear broadcasting to digital. However, there is some good news—there is a bright spot. Radio audiences have remained pretty stable. Now, the way advertising has shifted from traditional media to large global platforms—we’ve seen that migration. Digital advertising, now, is around $2 billion a year, with about $1.8 billion going offshore to big tech. This has had a massive implication on the mainstream media’s advertising revenue streams.

That shift in revenue to the global platforms means that media-business models are no longer viable. The old media that we grew up with is no longer able to operate and flourish under market forces. They need to find new ways of engaging the eyes and ears of New Zealanders, so these old media entities are in financial flux. The digital paradigm has completely flipped that media model on its head, and the legislation that applies to old media does not and cannot apply to big tech, which is situated offshore in Silicon Valley.

There is a reality that so far has evaded a workable arrangement by any nation, and this is a global problem that is being looked at. However, that issue now sits at the OECD level, and it’s not something that New Zealand is able to lead. What new media tends to do is extremely clever. These big tech giants use the connectivity, the fibre, and the internet—all that infrastructure—that was paid for by Government with our ultra-fast broadband roll-out investment. Also, we contribute to that as well by paying our monthly internet bills.

Now, until we find a satisfactory solution to our old media / new media dilemma, until that can be engineered, and until the question of trust in news is addressed and we return to more rigour in our journalism—and we are seeing some green shoots of that—the migration of audience from our old media to our new media will continue, and this is putting a strain on our mainstream media.

However, in terms of this bill, it’s extremely unlikely that relaxing advertising rules on Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Anzac Day morning will make the slightest difference to the difficulties overall that New Zealand media organisations are facing. Whilst the case may be able to be made that a little bit of revenue—it’s predicted about $6 million, inside this bill—might go and be generated for some of these media entities in a deregulated situation, a counter case can also be made that the same amount could be spent on either side of the days that are currently restricted.

In conclusion, I understand the media entities’ argument that this will level the playing field, but it’s the public and the audience that we need to hear, should this go to select committee. The repeal of section 81 will not necessarily make or break traditional media. There are those bigger factors at force, such as the influence of big global tech, which I spoke to earlier. Whether or not advertising on Christmas Day or even Easter Sunday will make a jot of difference is anybody’s guess. If this bill does go through to select committee, New Zealand First is very keen to hear from submitters. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this first reading of the Broadcasting (Repeal of Advertising Restrictions) Amendment Bill and I look forward to it coming to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. I heard, through another committee today, that it’s not just about revenue but about the ability to contract for other services that were previously limited because of this advertising restriction—for example, with the Cricket World Cup for TVNZ. I look forward to what this could do for the sector, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s a real privilege to rise and take a call on this, the Broadcasting (Repeal of Advertising Restrictions) Amendment Bill, because I think you’d be hard pushed to find someone in this House who doesn’t agree that our local media sector is in crisis. The inaction to do anything about that is, ultimately, a threat to our democracy, because we’ve seen such rapid shifts, changes, and closures across our local media sector just this year.

I just want to take the time—and I think it’s important that we do, rather than rushing out the door—to acknowledge that, across this year, we’ve seen, starting at 28 February, Warner Bros. Discovery proposing to close Newshub; on 7 March, TVNZ announcing 68 job cuts, including the end of midday and late-night news bulletins, as well as programmes like Fair Go and Sunday; on 9 April, Newshub confirming their closure plans, which resulted in more than 200 job losses; and, on the same day, in relation to the 68 TVNZ cuts, then media Minister Melissa Lee is reported by Radio New Zealand as saying, “If only I were a magician.”

Well, on 24 April, Melissa Lee lost her role as Minister for broadcasting, and Paul Goldsmith was appointed Minister. Now, on 2 July, he put out a press release saying that the Government was taking action to support the media sector. Since then, Newshub closed down; TVNZ announced a further 50 jobs to save a further $30 million; Radio New Zealand reported that the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill is “in limbo and not ready.”; NZME announced plans to close 14 regional community newspapers before Christmas, resulting in a further 30 job losses for the media sector; and, this week—this week—the Minister for broadcasting wrote in and announced a repeal totalling 73 words. If he’d written a word a day, he could have done it in two months, not eight.

It’s a fact that there are more solutions between the biscuit tin and between legislation sitting, waiting, and wanting at the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. There are more solutions sitting in those two places than there are coming from the Minister.

Now, the Minister wasn’t in the House last night to speak to the introduction of the bill, and we were surprised. He wasn’t at select committee this morning to hear from NZ On Air, to hear from RNZ, and to hear from TVNZ, and I thought: “This is how the industry feels.” They want engagement, they want to talk about the issues, and the Minister is simply missing in action. This is at a time when the largest and most powerful media companies to have ever existed have out-of-proportion influence over the local media content that New Zealanders can access.

This is a little bit like that scene from Austin Powers when Dr Evil proposes a hostage fee that is so not adjusted for inflation that he is laughed out of the room, because this repeal—at best—proposes an additional $6 million in ad revenue. Now, if you can find a single person in the media sector that agrees with that statement, I’ll buy them a round of drinks. And that round of drinks is actually what media commentators are suggesting this legislative change is, occurring eight months after Paul Goldsmith was appointed the Minister of broadcasting. about all it’s going to stack up to be.

This is a woeful, woeful, embarrassing bill. It shows a complete lack of engagement with the industry, a complete lack of understanding for exactly what is at stake with the losses that we are seeing across our media sector, and a blatant disregard for the threat to our democracy that the inaction from this Government to look after our local media presents.

Mr Speaker, my apologies for the previous speaker, Reuben Davidson, who was wanting to be the Grinch that stole Christmas! It is actually a good day in this House—that we’re here debating the Broadcasting (Repeal of Advertising Restrictions) Amendment Bill—and it’s a good day because National will be supporting this bill through to select committee.

I just want to pick up on a couple of things that previous members have spoken about. Firstly, my colleague Minister Goldsmith is working very, very hard and diligently in this portfolio. He does have COVID, which is why he wasn’t able to be at the select committee, but let’s come back to the facts of the industry. The facts of the industry are that it has been under a huge amount of change, not just in the last couple of years, but since the iPhone, the media landscape has significantly changed. That member was part of a Government, and Labour had six years in which they were actually able to enact changes, and what did they do? They didn’t make any changes at all.

We inherited the media bargaining bill which is before the fantastic and hard-working Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, and we’re working through that, but let’s be under no illusion: the media bargaining bill is a very small solution to a much bigger challenge, which is the upending of the media business models, and it’s incumbent on the organisations in those sectors to innovate and create new business models that will enable them to sustain and create vibrant business models in the future.

As I said, that is one such component of this landscape, but we are here debating another important bill, and this bill, I think, does away with the restrictions that were in place, which may have made sense back in 1960s and 1970s New Zealand but, frankly, don’t make sense in a modern New Zealand and going forward, particularly with the upending of the media sector, as we’ve seen. I certainly want, and most of my colleagues I hope would agree, a country with fewer regulations, not more, and so we welcome this bill taking away the unnecessary burden that will enable these companies and those who wish to advertise on these days.

Just for those at home—those two people across New Zealand who are live streaming this speech at home—this bill will allow advertising on Anzac Day, on Sundays, on Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. It is without further ado that I commend this bill to the House, but I do want to take the time to do two things. The first is to say that I look forward to hearing submissions on this bill as a member of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. We’ve got other committee members here in the House, and this bill will get a fair hearing at that select committee.

Finally, I just wish to say a very special, merry Christmas to all those members from across the House, no matter which party you’re from. Thank you to the staff, who diligently work and serve this Parliament. Thank you to my team back in the Northcote electorate. Thank you to my colleagues. It’s been a wonderful year—

Hon Kieran McAnulty: Why are you filibustering?

DAN BIDOIS: I’m not filibustering. This is the only time I’ve spoken in the House this week. This is my opportunity, Kieran McAnulty, to say some departing thoughts before I head back on to my flight to Auckland to spend Christmas with my family and my son, Noah. I’d like to wish you all a very special, merry Christmas. Take a good break and come back next year to work hard to get our country and our economy back on track. Thank you.

Thank you. I would like to extend my Christmas greetings to everybody in the House, particularly Dan, who has a small baby. There are people in this House who’ve got small babies, and I would like to extend my absolute sympathy to you this Christmas! Ha, ha! It’s always an interesting situation when you’re exhausted and you’ve got that level of pressure on you, so kia kaha.

What I want to talk about is this bill. I want to talk about it in a wider context. The bill, unfortunately—I’m going to support the bill, but the bill is, basically, going to produce $6 million in an industry that is absolutely on its feet. I agree with my colleagues: this is an industry that is vital to our democracy. It is incredibly important that we have a thriving media and that it isn’t all about algorithms and social media. What we have done is we’ve left a playing field that’s very uneven between the two parts of that industry, and it’s really not a very good sign that this Parliament has not been able to get this moving faster or find solutions that are much wider.

We did have some good policy progressing, while we were in Government, and I urge the Government to look at its own view of that policy but also to accept, maybe for the first time, that not everything is something that you leave to the market, because this is what happens when you’re just totally hands off and there are no rules. What you have is big businesses actually ruling the roost and doing exactly what they want, because it’s a cowboy world. What we have is an industry of good people, who are dedicated and intelligent and want to do the best for our democracy and want to actually make sure that New Zealanders get what they need out of their media and who will help people to understand what’s going on in a very challenging world.

We are not helping that at the present time. We have got stuck because we now have a Government that is very committed to this idea for everything, “We’re just going to get rid of regulation. We’re going to get rid of rules.” Well, there’s a place for these things. It’s all about balance. I want to fix things too. I don’t want regulation for regulation’s sake, but this is a really good example of where leadership involves actually making some rules, making it fair for people, thinking about the contribution that people make to this community, and fostering it.

I would urge this Government to consider, pretty quickly, its responsibility to get a plan, because I accept there isn’t one at the present time that they are happy with, but they had better get a plan, because, actually, we’ve got a whole lot of people who are relying upon free and good media—quality media—in this country. We have people who are really wonderful at their jobs, who are using them hand over fist. They are not able to bring New Zealanders the news that they need, the culture that they need, and the information perspective they need, because we are not doing our job in this Parliament anymore. We are not finding new, creative, interesting, pragmatic solutions to the new problems that we face. Those problems may not have been there 20 years ago, and $6 million of advertising funding is not going to cut it; it’s simply not. I wish it was, but it’s not.

We have to rethink our politics and our world and become pragmatic, but we also have to drop an ideology that’s, perhaps, as old as the previous regulation or part of this legislation. It’s so old, it needs to be chucked out. We need a Government that’s prepared to lead. Please do so. The voters voted for you to do it. We are the Opposition, so all we can do is advocate for that to happen. Please do so. Pick up the mantle. Lead as you should. Merry Christmas.

Mr Speaker, merry Christmas. I’m just reflecting on the speech we’ve just heard from Labour’s Helen White, and I’m contrasting it with what we heard from Labour’s Reuben Davidson and trying to work out where we stand here. On the one hand, we’re hearing, “We need to act. We need to do something. We need to take a step forward.” On the other hand, we’re hearing, “Don’t do anything. Don’t take a step forward.” We’re hearing, “This is terrible; it’s too much.”, and then we’re hearing, “It’s not enough.”

Let’s just boil this down to first principles. Let’s just think about what this is saying. This is taking a 1989 law which said we don’t want to have advertising on particular public holidays and on Sundays on free-to-air media. At the time, that was with an intent to preserve some of the more community, social content, which was considered non-commercial programming at the time. Of course, as we know, over the last 35 years, culture has evolved, programming has evolved, and media has evolved, but what hasn’t evolved is the legislation that walks hand in hand with that, and that’s why the change is needed.

I err more towards what Ms White was saying—that we actually need to do something. We need to take a step forward, and we need to think about what happens now. I remember growing up in the 1980s and the 1990s, and you’d set the VCR to record. There was always a war movie on on Christmas Day—don’t ask me why but there was—and you could record it with no adverts. It was fantastic. It was great. Now, that makes no sense to a lot of people out there—what’s a video, and why would you set it, and how did all this work?

The point is that media has evolved. In fact, we have a tradition in our family. Our Christmas movie is Top Gun. I went to watch it on Netflix the other day, and it wasn’t on, so I’ve introduced my daughter to Saving Private Ryan as a new Christmas movie. The point is that we now watch things on demand. I remember that when Dad was still around, at 5.50 p.m. every Christmas Day, he’d walk through to the lounge because we had to see the Queen’s message. These days, of course, it’s the King’s message. It was the only time and the only way you could watch it. Gran would be there with her brandy on the couch, and this is what would happen.

The point is that we have moved on from 1989, and so the legislation needs to now. Even if people want to watch TVNZ programming—and one of my other daughters and I love watching Taskmaster together, and we watch it on demand because life is busy and I don’t have a lot of time to sit around watching TV. When we can, we grab those moments, and we watch it on demand. If you want to watch the cricket highlights from the great test in Hamilton—and well done to the Black Caps; what a great victory it was to finish Tim Southee’s career—you watch it on demand. It’s all there. You can get the full replay.

Steve Abel: He doesn’t have figures like Tim Costley, though.

TIM COSTLEY: Oh, you’re a generous man, Steve Abel. The point is that we have moved on, and these offshore corporates are taking the advertising revenue that goes with programming. Why would we go and place what now seem like arbitrary rules on top of our free-to-air media, local media, New Zealand media? Why would we restrict them when not everyone else in the market is? Surely we believe in one rule for all. Surely that would be a guiding principle for what we do.

I am in support of a bill and a mechanism that applies that principle, which says, “Let’s put everyone on an equal playing field. Let’s give the Kiwis in media a chance. Let’s give them a chance to nudge forward so that we get some of that great Kiwi programming.” I take the point that it’s $6 million—but it’s $6 million. I tell you what: go and talk to those that work in this industry.

Today, in fact, this very day, is the final ever Kāpiti News publication, the last newspaper for the Kāpiti Coast. Friday will see the last ever Horowhenua Chronicle. Those are two great publications. Here are Kiwis in media who are directly impacted, ultimately, by the amount of advertising revenue that can keep Kiwi media afloat. Well, translate that to visual media, translate that to television, and translate that to programming and to advertising. This is why it makes a difference.

This might not be the panacea, the fix-all, for New Zealand media, but it makes a difference. It’s a logical thing. It puts everyone on an even playing field. It gives Kiwis a chance. It will, I hope, keep some more Kiwis employed. You can still watch the King’s message online. You can watch it delayed. You can watch it when you’re ready. You can go and find a great Christmas movie like Top Gun online. I’ll be doing that with my daughter this Christmas, but this bill is the right step forward.

Can I just take the last couple of seconds to wish everyone, particularly those in Ōtaki, Horowhenua, and Kāpiti, a merry Christmas. I am thinking of those who have lost their jobs with the closure of those two papers today. To everyone in the Ōtaki electorate, I say it’s a privilege to represent you. I look forward to a strong and productive 2025. Merry Christmas. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is, That the Broadcasting (Repeal of Advertising Restrictions) Amendment Bill be considered by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.