Wednesday, 18 June 2025

Public broadcasters

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (18:02): (1719) I want to raise a matter, which follows on from the debate that we just had now, for the Minister for Creative Industries. We are very pleased that the chamber has wholeheartedly passed a motion I think with unanimous support to see the SBS brought to Victoria out of Western Sydney and to see resources moved here from these national broadcasters, which are funded largely by taxpayers money. They are very important matters for creative industries, for the production sector and for the whole range of linkage industries. What I would seek for the Minister for Creative Industries to do is to every year publish a summary of the staffing and spending by the two government-funded national broadcasters – that is, the ABC and the SBS – and to table in both houses of this Parliament a short report that looks at the spending by those organisations and the resources provided to the organisations geographically, the head office functions, the commissioning of a range of production and the linkage industries and the jobs created in particular sectors in Melbourne and in Victoria.

This would be a constructive monitoring of the national bodies, these government-funded national broadcasters which are funded by taxpayers money. In the case of SBS, as we have heard today, 80 per cent of their staff are located in Sydney, now many in Western Sydney, and only 14 to 18 per cent are located in Victoria – that is, in Melbourne. I think by monitoring this the Minister for Creative Industries could successfully keep some pressure on this matter. It would be a small research task for his department and then the publication, perhaps by leave, of a short report each year. I think this would be something that could also be sent to the federal communications minister and to those two organisations and could obviously have some public release that would year by year track the spending of national money and Victoria’s share. It has been paltry, it has been inadequate and we need to keep up political pressure on governments of whatever colour at a national level to ensure that we are not short-changed. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars worth of jobs, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of linkage.