Interview with Tim Williams, 2MCE Bathurst

TIM WILLIAMS, HOST: With me in the studio now I have Michelle Rowland, the Federal Minister for Communications. On Saturday night, a couple of nights, Michelle was the guest speaker at the Light on the Hill, the annual Ben Chifley Memorial Dinner in Bathurst. Good morning. How are you?

MICHELLE ROWLAND, MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Great, thank you.

WILLIAMS: Okay, do you just want to give us a quick recap on what you did on Saturday night, which was pretty much a speech on what your portfolio embraces?

ROWLAND: I wanted to do two main things. The first is to highlight that having been given the great honour of doing the Chifley oration at this dinner – which has been given by really eminent people, including Prime Minister Albanese and former Prime Minister Paul Keating – I wanted to highlight how Ben Chifley’s vision of an inclusive society was one that is not only eternal but one that continues to guide Labor Governments today.

And, secondly, to point out the proof points for that journey and that realisation and that vision. I think it’s really important when we think about the barriers to society back in Chifley’s day, they would have been the same, yet different. It would have been about exclusion based on postcode, based on education attainment, based on not only geography but your status in life, your birthright, whether you had inherited wealth or you were making your own wealth. But today, one of the biggest determinants of the digital divide is whether you live in the regions or a metropolitan area, and particularly if you live in a very remote area of Australia.

I wanted to point out that the enduring principles that Ben Chifley articulated and espoused throughout his political career and entire life that are still relevant today, and to demonstrate how I’m thinking about that as Minister for Communications, and how the Albanese Government is thinking about that as a Government pretty much half way through its first term. We really want to be a Government of delivery. That is the instruction the Prime Minister has given to all his Ministers.

I wanted to take the time to go through the various aspects of the Communications portfolio, and in doing so, I thought it was neat that I was able to draw some comparisons between what would have been communications back in Chifley’s day. It would have been the wireless, the Overland Telegraph, letters, telegrams. But today, it’s all encompassing from social media to community radio to free-to-air television, all of the digital platforms, and classifications. All these new areas that Chifley would never have thought of, but he really did espouse enduring principles that stay alive to this day, and I want to continue to apply to my work as Minister for Communications.

WILLIAMS: In Bathurst we still have Ben Chifley’s home in Busby Street. And when you look at that home – and its preserved exactly as it was when he lived there – and you work out that, you know, he used to have to travel from Bathurst to Canberra, and even the travel time and the travel mode from where he lived, to Canberra, to Parliament House, it’s just amazing how different it is. And when you look through that home and the different things, there is a Bakelite radio that is still sitting in that home. And you think about what Ben Chifley was as Prime Minister, where he came from, how he lived with his wife, it just is amazing. So, as you say, you know, communicating and, you know, letters and telegrams, that was pretty much it, wasn’t it?

ROWLAND: It was pretty much it. And you see those old photos of people standing around the wireless looking at a box. And that would have been the way they were consuming information. There was no option for interaction. It wasn’t like you had talkback radio even then. It would have been really early start for different personalities who would have been on the radio. But with the evolution from there, you think about all the significant announcements that would have been made on the wireless.

And it’s one of the reasons why I am a really strong proponent of radio and community radio in particular. Community radio gives that diversity. It does the really heavy lifting when it comes to delivering for regional Australia, in particular. And it’s one of those earliest forms of media where so many people wrote it off too early and said with the advent of streaming services, with different platforms where you can obtain music and podcasts, radio will die. Radio has just bloomed. And it’s bloomed because it has been an innovative sector. It’s very much a two-way relationship. I mean, good people like yourself, that talent, that interaction with people, you don’t get that on other forms of platforms.

It continues to obviously be a really important priority for this Government; that broadcasting is here for a very long time. Certainly we’re going digital, but broadcasting has, again, adapted to a digital age. And I think it will continue to adapt. What you mentioned there is actually a really nice thread. That wireless is still performing the same important function. It’s received differently, the interaction are different. You’ll be able to listen to podcasts and replays and streaming through radio services. But ultimately, radio has survived and thrived. And I really like that analogy that you give about Ben Chifley and that Bakelite.

WILLIAMS: Radio has had to reinvent itself a number of times over the years – 1956, the advent of television, radio was written off. And yet it then had to change from what it was. And its continuing to do that. So, you know – and you’re right with community radio, there are so many different forms of programs on community radio that are just not on commercial radio.

ROWLAND: Absolutely. And I think that localism element is again one of those enduring principles. People want local news services, opinions. They’re interested in it. And I think they continue to be receptive to it. But one of the points I also made in my address last night was the importance of our public broadcasters as well. In this ecosystem we have free-to-air broadcasting, we have our public broadcasters, we have community broadcasting. But by giving our public broadcasters five-year funding terms, taking them out of the usual three-year political cycle, this has been about giving them independence and stability.

They need to also continue to show the way when it comes to broadcasting. I think both the ABC and SBS have demonstrated by being early adopters of technologies like podcasting, continuing to being innovative on their respective platforms – ABC iView, SBS On Demand – I think they continue to serve a really important function of leading the way and showing the ecosystem as a whole what can be done.

WILLIAMS: I think one of the other things that stood out to me in your speech a couple of nights ago was internet and the fact that the internet was, you know, pretty much written off in the early days, wasn’t it, by alternate governments, you know, to the stage where we now have the internet and you’re able to get, you know, fibre to homes and whatever. So that’s a big part of your portfolio, isn’t it?

ROWLAND: Absolutely. I’m very privileged to have responsibility for the two great government business enterprises: NBN Co and Australia Post. And for the NBN, the reason this was set up was precisely looking at market failure that happened in regional and rural Australia. Successive reports would show that that digital divide I talked about was being exacerbated over the years, there was not investment happening by market forces in the regions, and something needed to be done. And hence the National Broadband Network was born.

We had an incoming Coalition Government 10 years ago that decided that they would take it back to a copper-based functionality, and the job that we have now is to improve all aspects of its technology, including through fibre upgrades. We went to the election with a $2.4 billion investment to fibre-up more premises, including 660,000 of them in the regions, improving the Fixed Wireless network and improving the satellite service as well. All of these have worked together to create a National Broadband Network that is more fit-for-purpose where it previously wasn’t under the former Government.

But I tell you what, when I became Minister for Communications, I made it very clear that when it came to the National Broadband Network, I wanted as a country to talk far more about what it can do than what it was. We had a decade of inertia and, in fact, setting Australia backwards, doubling the cost of the NBN. Having come in as Minister, I am really keen to continue to engage with regional Australians and especially consumers and small businesses whose ways of transacting have fundamentally changed since the pandemic. And more than anything, I think the pandemic showed that technology is absolutely necessary to be able to participate remotely and realise that vision, which was shared by Chifley, of overcoming the tyranny of distance.

The NBN continues to be a really important function in that accessibility to broadband and, in particular, accessibility for school students. We saw that during the pandemic. Again, I represent an area, outer metropolitan area of North West Sydney, and I had parents telling me how they would park outside fast food restaurants during morning sessions so their kids could download using the free Wi-Fi the work that they needed to do for that day for remote learning. That’s completely unacceptable.

So, we’ve got an initiative in place to give school students free broadband through the NBN for a year. And I think that this will make a great difference. We’ve seen really good take-up of this. And I hope that this does make a measurable difference to people’s lives, including here in the Central West.

WILLIAMS: There are a couple of things that come out of that. I liked your analogy the other night of the amount of copper wire that was purchased. What was it – one and a quarter times something around the world it would have gone?

ROWLAND: 60,000 kilometres of new copper. That’s enough to wrap around the Planet Earth one and a half times. That is what taxpayers paid for rather than a fibre solution which delivers obviously better quality, better speeds, lower latencies, an overall better experience. And the rest of the world are moving towards fibre rather than copper, but not Australia over that decade. As I said, we want to really continue, however, to look forward. This is about making sure that we deliver for the people of regional Australia when it comes to broadband.

WILLIAMS: One of the other things that was very evident as you said, it was very evident that people learnt during the pandemic that they could work from home. But the other one that happened for the central west – Bathurst and Orange - was that people realised that they didn’t have to live in Sydney to work from home and were close enough to the metropolitan area that so many people moved. We’ve had a big influx of people into both Bathurst and Orange.

ROWLAND: I think that is such a remarkable observation as well because it does mean that – these are growth regions. We often think – when you’re city based, you often think about growth regions being in outer metropolitan areas of big cities. But, of course, growth regions are in the regions as well. And governments need to respond to that and to act accordingly. And the notion you can live somewhere as beautiful as the Central West of New South Wales, that you can have the same opportunities, you can continue to participate in meetings and interact with government, engage in e-commerce without needing to move – or, indeed, making a lifestyle choice to move – I think is a fundamental shift. And we’ll continue, I think, to see this. This is such a beautiful part of New South Wales, a beautiful part of Australia. It’s a glorious day, and you can understand why people want to live in this area.

WILLIAMS: Michelle Rowland, the Federal Minister for Communications, thank you, first, for coming to Bathurst for your highlight speech on the Light on the Hill, and thank you for joining us this morning.

ROWLAND: Absolute pleasure. And all the best to you and your good listeners.