Budget Review 2022–23 Index
Philip Dearman
The Government has allocated $24.8 million over 5 years (and
$0.8 million per year ongoing) for a package of measures titled ‘Media Sector
Reforms’ (Budget
measures: budget paper no. 2: 2022–23, pp. 145–146). The measures were
originally announced by the Government on 7 February 2022, in a set of policy
proposals titled Media
Policy Statement: Green Paper Response and Next Steps. That statement
in turn is an outcome of a consultation process which started in November 2020
with the release of the Media
Reform Green Paper, subtitled ‘Modernising television regulation in
Australia’.
Funding for the Media Sector Reforms measures is a small
proportion of the $3.3 billion annual funding allocated to the ‘broadcasting’
and ‘arts and cultural heritage’ sub-functions of the Budget, outlined in Budget
strategy and outlook: budget paper no. 1: 2022–23 (p. 160), which support
media and arts industries such as broadcasting, film and television production,
live events, and public galleries and museums.
There is also $4.3 billion allocated for Australia’s
national public broadcasters over 3 years from 2022–23 to 2024–25 (Budget paper
no. 2, p. 146), which confirms the announcement
by the Government on 7 February 2022 that it had ‘locked in’ new triennial
funding agreements with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the
Special Broadcasting Corporation (SBS).
Size aside, the measures warrant examination because they point
to some of the complex challenges the Government has encountered on its journey
towards the goal of ‘media reform’ that it established early in the term of the
46th Parliament.
The first stage of that journey was an announcement in
December 2019, when the Government responded to
the final report of the Digital Platforms
Inquiry with a number of commitments to support Australian media. This included—crucially—a
commitment to a ‘harmonised media regulatory framework’, which would be
achieved by:
… a staged process to reform media regulation towards an end
state of a platform-neutral regulatory framework covering both online and
offline delivery of media content to Australian consumers. (p. 9)
The Media Sector Reforms package includes 5 different elements,
as set out below.
Journalism training
A total of $10.0
million is provided for a 2-year program titled the Journalist
(Cadetship and Training) Fund, from 2021–22, ‘to support broadcasters and
publishers to hire, train and upskill cadets and journalists to support public
interest news in regional Australia’ (Budget paper no. 2, p. 145). The bulk
of this money—$8.0 million—is to be spent on hiring cadets, while $2.0 million will
go to upskilling journalists. The Media Policy Statement indicates that the
latter funding ‘is likely to target identified gaps for regional journalists,
including digital literacy.’ (p. 8)
It is not clear at this
point what kinds of organisations will be able to offer this kind of training,
but perhaps one likely candidate will be the University of Melbourne’s recently
established Digital News Academy, which is a joint venture involving the
Melbourne Business School, News Corp Australia and Google.
The guidelines
for the cadetships state that each package ‘will have a total value (over
two years) of $150,000. The Government will contribute 70 per cent of each
cadetship package, up to $105,000, and successful grant recipients will be
required to contribute the remaining 30 per cent.’ (p. 2) Applications for the
cadetship funding have already opened and will continue until 20 April 2022. Guidelines
for the upskilling component of the Fund have not yet been published.
This funding resembles 2
components of the Regional
and Small Publishers Jobs and Innovation Package (RASPI), which was
allocated $60.4 million when established in 2017, and which included the Regional
Journalism Scholarships Program and the Regional and Small Publishers
Cadetships Program.
A departmental submission
to the Senate’s
inquiry into media diversity noted that those 2 programs ultimately funded 66
scholarships at 16 universities and 43 cadetships at 39 small and regional
publishers, with a total value of $4.5 million (Submission 49, p. 12). It
further noted that $36.6 million of the original funding allocated to the RASPI
program was ultimately diverted to the Public Interest News Gathering (PING)
program, which was one of several short-term measures announced
in April 2020 to support media businesses during COVID-19 (Submission 49,
p. 13).
Research on the future of
television
A new Television
Research and Policy Development Program is to receive $7.3 million over 3
years from 2021–22, to ‘support the Government’s long-term media reforms in
collaboration with industry’ (Budget paper no. 2, p. 145). Evidence
provided at a recent
Senate estimates hearing (p. 82) indicates
this Program will research matters raised in the Media
Reform Green Paper consultations, including about the technical
capabilities of the approximately 20 million television sets that are currently
in homes and commercial premises across the country, as well as ‘technology
standards, spectrum questions and planning questions associated with any
transition to new broadcast technologies.’
The Media Policy
Statement (p. 13) notes that while Australia relies on free-to-air
broadcasting—particular television services—to ‘deliver key public outcomes,
namely quality Australian content and public interest news’, the available
technologies and existing regulatory settings are ‘dated’.
The Statement (pp. 14–15)
references several industry submissions to the Green Paper consultations which
argued more time is needed to work through questions about technology standards
and options for more efficient use of spectrum.
However, some industry
groups have reportedly expressed frustration about the measures. The chief
executive of Free TV, the industry lobby group for Australia’s commercial free-to-air
television companies, has been reported
by the Australian Financial Review to have ‘blasted’ the Government
about key issues ‘like prominence, anti-siphoning and spectrum tax kicked into
the long grass’. The report quoted Free TV CEO Bridget Fair as saying
‘broadcasters have waited almost a year for this response and to say we are
underwhelmed is an understatement.’
In any case, the Media
Policy Statement proposes that a new Future of Broadcasting Working Group will
also be established alongside the new research program. This Working Group will
be established in early 2022 and include a range of industry and government representatives.
It will finalise its consideration of ‘technology futures’ by late 2023 (p.16).
Development of an Australian
content and investment framework
Budget Paper No. 2
states that $4.0 million is being provided over 5 years, from 2021–22, to
establish the Australian Content Reporting and Investment Framework which will
‘support the provision of Australian content to Australian audiences, including
in relation to subscription video on demand (SVOD) services.’ (p. 145)
This is a conflation of
2 policies announced by the Minister on 7 February 2022. The first, set out in
his media
release on media sector reform refers to a new ‘Streaming Services
Reporting and Investment Scheme [which will] incentivise and, as needed,
require large subscription video on demand (SVOD, or streaming) services to
invest in Australian content.’ This would affect streaming services operating
in Australia, such as Netflix, Stan, Amazon Prime and Disney+. The Media Policy
Statement proposes that the scheme will ‘set clear expectations’ on large
streaming services about how much they should spend on new Australian content,
and ‘require reporting on investment and efforts to make Australian content
discoverable to Australian audiences’ (p. 7). The Department of Infrastructure,
Transport, Regional Development and Communications (DITRDC) has issued a discussion
paper for consultation on the proposed scheme. Submissions can be made
until 24 April 2022.
This proposal builds on
a reporting regime introduced by the Government in
September 2020 as part of a ‘simplification’ of the regulations pertaining
to Australian screen content, which required large streaming services operating
in Australia to report regularly to the Australian Communications and Media
Authority (ACMA) on their investment in Australian content.
The second policy under
the umbrella of a ‘content and investment framework’ is referred to in the
Minister’s media
release on media sector reform as a ‘National Broadcasters Reporting
Framework’, which will provide the Government with ‘enhanced information on the
provision of Australian content by the ABC and SBS.’
On the same day, the
Minister noted in a media
release on triennial funding for the national public broadcasters that he
had written to both organisations about their funding packages and issued Statements
of Expectations to both the
ABC and SBS
regarding the proposed National Broadcasters Reporting Framework for Australian
Content, and a range of other matters.
The Shadow Minister for
Communications, Michelle Rowland, has expressed
concern about the proposed Framework, claiming the Minister ‘is not
empowered to issue Statements of Expectations to the national broadcasters.’ She
described any requirement for additional reporting by the broadcasters as
‘regulation by stealth’.
Continued access for remote
television audiences to the VAST system
The Viewer
Access Satellite Television (VAST) service, which provides an alternative
reception option for viewers in remote areas and in terrestrial digital
television ‘black spots’ who are not able to receive television services from
terrestrial transmission sites, has been allocated a further $3.5 million for 3
years from 2021–22 (Budget paper no. 2, p. 145).
A review of the VAST service
published
in December 2018 noted that while funding for the service was due to end in
2020, it should be continued ‘for the next 5 years, as it currently provides
the only available cost effective and fit-for-purpose service delivery model
for free-to-air television in areas not served by a terrestrial transmission
service.’ (p. 41)
According to the DITRDC
Portfolio
Budget Statement, 252,644 households were registered for direct to home
satellite television services through VAST at the end of December 2021. (p. 74)
Further financial assistance to regional
commercial broadcasters
The package includes support for regional commercial
broadcasters in the form of a rebate of the Commercial Broadcasting Tax (CBT) for
2 years, from 2022–23. This is expected to decrease revenue by $9.5 million (Budget
paper no. 2, p. 145).
The Media Policy Statement (p. 19) notes that the CBT—which
levies approximately $46 million per annum on commercial television and radio
broadcasters for their use of spectrum—was implemented in 2017, as part of a
package of media reforms which included the scrapping of licence fees for
commercial broadcasters. The Statement also notes that transitional support
payments were required to ‘ensure that no broadcaster was worse off under the
new spectrum pricing arrangements, which expired in 2020–21.’ (p. 19)
The ACMA reviewed the CBT in 2021, proposing it should not be
repealed, because ‘it provides the Government with the flexibility to impose a
price on spectrum that represents its value and provides opportunities for
recovering the indirect costs of spectrum management.’ (Media Policy Statement,
p. 19)
The Statement concludes, on this point, that the Government ‘remains
open to the idea of offering broadcasters a choice to move to lower cost
operating models including an option for a new licence type with no CBT, but
has made no decisions in this area.’ (p. 19) It proposes to continue the
transitional support payments ‘so that no broadcaster is worse off due to the
CBT arrangements implemented in 2017.’ (p. 19)
Conclusion
The significance of this package of measures is not in the volume
of dollars allocated but in what each component signifies for the state of
media policy in Australia: each component references a work in progress, from a
past in need of ‘reform’, to a future that is yet to be calibrated as fully
‘platform neutral’—where media regulation is based on conduct and content
rather than the mode by which content is delivered.
These matters have been recognised as highly significant. As
the Media
Reform Green Paper (p. 10) noted, in 2018–19 the Australian media sector employed
approximately 90,000 Australians and at the same time generated an estimated
$47.7 billion of domestic revenue through advertising and consumer spend in
2019. Media also provide access to public interest journalism, which in turn
enables Australians ‘to hold governments, public officials and corporations to
account and to participate in informed public debate.’ (p. 10)
Further, screen content which has a ‘focus on Australian
stories, voices and perspectives’ is not only popular with audiences but also ‘helps
to reflect Australia both to itself’ and ‘support cultural identity, social
cohesion and points of connection between Australian citizens.’ (p. 10)
Questions about media reform present major challenges. This
has been the case for a succession of governments, at least since the early
2010s when the focus was on ‘media convergence’—for example in reports by the Australian
Law Reform Commission and by the Convergence
Review Committee, both published in 2012.
The focus in 2022 is now on ‘harmonising’ regulatory
frameworks, on subjecting digital platforms and other media to a more
consistent set of rules and thereby creating what the Minister for
Communications has
called ‘a level playing field that promotes competition in Australian media
and advertising markets’. The current Government has certainly made some
progress towards this, including passage of the News
Media Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, a new industry code
on disinformation, and a consolidation of online safety legislation in the
new Online Safety Act 2021.
But the work of media reform is ongoing, and the outcomes of
these individual measures will be very interesting to watch.
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