The Digital Restack is a simple concept. When digital television was introduced in Australia, each station was given six channels but opted to use only five. In fact, they often struggle to provide entertaining content on even those five. The bandwidth from the sixth channel has been sitting unused between stations all this time.

A digital restack would simply move the channels closer together, freeing up a block of bandwidth that could be auctioned off for between $1 billion and $2 billion—funds that taxpayers could benefit from now. More importantly, this revenue could help grow the economy and create jobs.

One Nation believes a small portion of this bandwidth should be dedicated to two Community Television channels, providing community access to broadcasting, defeating the media monopoly on TV programming. Melbourne’s C31 is an excellent example of the quality and audience reach that community television can achieve.

I asked the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) what happened to the restack that was due this year. The answer was extraordinary. According to the Minister, they are conducting “a managed and staged process of thinking about the future of broadcasting, including broadcasters, ourselves, the department and the audiences for those programs, in looking at how that future state of broadcasting can be managed.”

In other words, they have no plans to proceed—just a stream of bureaucratic word salad instead.

This government is failing us.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Yes. And we’ve seen how that goes. This is my final question. It is about the digital restack. I looked through your annual work program report and found this comment regarding the digital television channel restack. I quote:

Exploring possible parameters and solutions for channel planning relevant to possible new shared multiplex arrangements. This work will provide evidence to inform any future restack—

The restack was to be a closing up of digital TV channels. This sounds like you have something else in mind for the sixth channel, the gap between each station. What is the plan for the restack now?

Ms O’Loughlin: The Minister for Communications gave a speech a couple of weeks ago at our RadComms conference. They were talking about a program of work that needed to be done around the future of television. Her emphasis in that was that free-to-air television is incredibly important in Australia because it reaches 99 per cent of the population. It is free to air. How is that going to evolve over the next 10 years? Will it be terrestrially driven or will some of it go online? The minister was talking about a managed and staged process of thinking about the future of broadcasting, including the broadcasters, ourselves, the department and the audiences for those programs. It is looking at how that future state of broadcasting can be managed. A small part of that is what happens to the spectrum that may be freed up over that process. Part of our job is what that might be and when that might occur. The annual report says that requires channel planning. A whole lot of spectrum planning would have to be done to facilitate any movement of the broadcasters and the freeing up of that spectrum over time.

Senator ROBERTS: What does that mean in English, so that people can understand? What is the reality? You have said managed and staged, which indicates to me that it is more than just a premonition of an idea that something might happen. Something is happening.

Ms O’Loughlin: The minister’s announcement was about some things that have happened recently. For example, in Mildura, the Channel 10 services were turned off because the local providers who provided that service didn’t think it was financially feasible to continue it. It has an impact on consumers. WIN has made some changes to its arrangements in other parts of the country, where it is sharing its own infrastructure. That has an implication. That has actually not affected those audiences very well. I think what the minister is saying is that if there is going to be an end state where broadcasting wants to go, we need to think about all the steps that have to take place for that to get there effectively. That is what is alluded to. There is what is called a future broadcasting working group, which the minister has asked to be reinvigorated, to start thinking about these issues for the next 10 or 15 years, not the next two or three.