Broadcasting bill lambasted

Press, 20 April 1982, Page 6

Broadcasting bill lambasted

Many “nefarious enterprises” could be launched under the Broadcasting Amendment Bill, said the Labour spokesman on-Consti-tutional Affairs (Mr G. W. R. Palmer) in Christchurch yesterday.

Under the new bill a wide range of broadcasting matters would have to be submitted to the Minister of Broadcasting for direction, Mr Palmer told a lunch-time meeting arranged by the Christchurch branch of the Public Service Association. The existing powers of direction were much more narrow.

“The evil of the bill is that it allows a statutory system erected by Parliament to run public broadcasting, to be drastically changed without changing the law. A series of ministerial directions, over time, could accomplish massive changes. Yet the embarrassment of a new bill is avoided,” he said.

A provision in the bill would permit the progressive dismantling of the New Zealand nblic broadcasting sys-

land public broadcast tem by Ministerial , directive. New developments by the Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand coiild be limited and the part played by private organisations could be widened. Checks on the use of the wide powers contained in the new bill were inadequate, said Mr Palmer. “Ministerial direction will

be subject to few restraints, It is bound by no statutory principles?’ The provisions in the bill relating to the “Listener” were “some of the most remarkable I have seen in any bill," he said. They would bring about “the intended destruction” of the magazine. “Instead of the page-and-a-half of lawyer's ‘boilerplate’ in the bill about this, it would have been more honest to say that ‘the Government can do with the corporation’s programme particulars whatever it likes’,” he said. Mr Palmer also criticised an editorial printed in “The Press” on April 12, which said the provisions in the Broadcasting . Amendment Bill were no great cause for disquiet. “I believe disclosure of the company’s interest in a consortium of newspaper companies developing a participation in television should have been made in that editorial,” he said.