This week on Radio National’s Media Report Mick O’Regan canvassed views on the future of the ABA and ACA, and how public appointments should be made to these bodies in future.
Senator John Cherry told O’Regan: “Look, the Democrats have been adamant that we want to see a merit-based appointment system for public bodies, and that should be modelled on what happens with the Commissioner of Public Appointments in the UK. That means that there should be an independent panel with clear selection criteria on what’s required from a board; independent panels should determine a shortlist, and from that shortlist the Minister should ultimately determine the appointments… the whole objective of that is it must be independent, must be accountable…”
Shadow Communications Minister Lindsay Tanner made the argument on O’Regan’s program that “the Flint period at the ABA has not been without success in some areas, especially the expansion of the radio sector to make it more competitive.”
But Tanner also contends that under David Flint, “the organisation was brought into disrepute by his persistent involvement in major public controversies.”
He says the new Chairman should be “a person of extensive relevant experience, not entangled with controversy, nor deeply connected to one side of politics or the other.”
Mick O’Regan also explored the merger of the ABA and ACA, saying:
“…the days of the ABA as a stand-alone regulator are numbered. The government, with the support of the ALP, plans to merge the ABA and the ACA to form the ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
”According to the Minister’s office, the new authority will ‘be responsible for regulating telecommunications, broadcasting, radio communications and online content’. Basically, as media convergence becomes a reality, a single comprehensive regulator makes sense.
”In the United Kingdom the Blair government has taken a similar initiative, last December merging five separate regulatory bodies into one: OFCOM: the Office of Communications. So, has it made the situation better?”
He interviewed Westminster University Communications Professor Stephen Barnett who argues merging the cultural regulation of broadcast standards with technical and economic criteria is likely to be problematic.
Barnett said: “The real tension at the heart of OFCOM is the philosophy, if you like, the culture that came out of Telecom, which is very much competition-based. It’s consumer protection, but allowing the market to decide within certain limits. Whereas the culture that’s come out of television regulation, broadcasting regulation in the UK is very much rooted in cultural and social considerations, almost democratic considerations.
“How do you provide for the best possible broadcasting system to serve the interests of people as citizens, not just as consumers?
”And as the Bill, the Communications Bill, was going through parliament, there was a tremendous amount of debate about how OFCOM was going to resolve those two tensions.
“And in fact what’s happened is that they actually now have twin obligations, twin statutory obligations, first to serve the interests of citizens and at the same time to serve the interests of consumers and to promote competition. So how they resolve that tension is actually going to be the battleground for a number of conflicts I think within OFCOM itself, as we move through the next few years…
”I think that perhaps the biggest and certainly the most controversial, which does encapsulate that dilemma, has been their first study of the whole of public service television. They are obliged by parliament to produce a report on the state of public service broadcasting every five years. They’ve just produced the first part of their first study, within which you can see precisely that kind of tension.
”They’re saying that on the one hand there are certain things that television ought to be doing for people as citizens, which to some extent is being performed, but in others isn’t, but at the same time they’re saying ‘we accept that there are certain things that commercial television may have to draw back from in order to be able to concentrate on certain core objectives.’
”So what we’re seeing is … the beginnings of them withdrawing from some of the traditional public service areas like religion programs, arts programs, children’s programs, to concentrate on a couple of core areas, in particular news and regional programs which OFCOM is making clear they believe are still very important. But beyond that will probably be allowed to concentrate on the more populist and ratings-generated types of programs.
The program can be heard in full by clicking the link below.