Ripe for the razor gang

Sometimes politicians ask good questions.  And sometimes the best questions are so obvious that nobody has thought to ask them.

Last week Lindsay Tanner, federal Labor's finance spokesman, posed just such a question.  Over the past few days The Australian Financial Review has published the transcript of a round table discussion with senior members of the ALP front bench.  It was during this discussion that Tanner asked rhetorically "What have we got a Department of Communications for?"

Good question.  It is probably too much to hope that a future Labor government would abolish the Department of Communications, information Technology and the Arts.  But it's encouraging that at least Tanner is not unwilling to speculate on its future.

Kevin Rudd has promised that a razor gang would find at least $3 billion of cuts to federal spending.  If the razor gang is going to do its job properly it will need to do more than simply shave a few million dollars from various department programs.  It should examine not just the size of departments, but why they exist in the first place.

A good place to start would be the Department of Communications and the agencies that attempt to regulate media aid telecommunications in this country.  Rudd's razor gang could ask what do the department's 800 employees do all day?

The department is a perfect example of bureaucratic rule-making run amok.  Reducing the department's spending and regulatory functions would not only save money.  More importantly there would be better policy outcomes if decisions about the future of media and technology were the result of choices by consumers instead of the product of political compromise and manipulation.

In the field of telecommunications media there are numerous instances of government interference in areas where there is no role for government.

Why government should determine what sort of TV set families have in their lounge room has never quite been explained.  It's no surprise that the take-up of digital TV in Australia has been poor.  As soon as the government gave itself the responsibility for administering the process such a result could have been predicted.  Indeed, what has occurred is exactly what was predicted Digital Australia is the government body managing the transition to digital broadcasting.  It is an organisation in search of a purpose.  In the jargon of Canberra it is a "dedicated switchover body".  Presumably members of Rudd's razor gang will keep their eyes peeled for any other "dedicated switchover bodies" lurking in the federal administration.

There's no denying that bad television reception is annoying.  However, it is debatable whether taxpayers should be forced to pay to improve the television reception of other taxpayers.  Not surprisingly, the coalition's television "black soot" program has proved popular marginal electorates.  Somehow the desire of residents in regional areas to watch the SBS World News free of fuzzy lines on their TV screens has been elevated to be one of their basic human rights.

One of the more time-consuming activities of the Australian Communications and Media Authority is the collection of information as to whether broadcasting licence holders are obeying the terms of their licence.  A quick perusal of some of the authority's recent decisions reveals the fierce determination of the nation's public servants to adjudicate on every aspect of what we hear and see from broadcasters.

Last month the authority ordered Groove FM, a community radio station in Perth, to "broadcast an average of four Australian music items per hour during each eight-hour period commencing 6am, 2pm and 10pm".  Groove FM must also "provide ACMA, until February 28, 2008, with monthly reports on the number of Australian music items played per hour on the station".  This means that Groove FM has to account to the government for what is played during every one of the more than 3000 hours between now and February next year.  All of this is required because Groove FM is licensed as a radio station that plays "a high level" of local and Australian music.  Presumably someone has decided that if a radio station plays four Australian songs an hour it qualifies as providing "a high level" of local content, but playing only three Australian songs does not.

Maybe one of the first tasks for Rudd's razor gang could be to ask what is the purpose of public servants collecting lists of how many times a Perth radio station plays Guy Sebastian's new hit single Cover On My Heart.

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