Bill
Broadcasting Services Amendment (Community Television) Bill 2024
passed, as at 2024-04-08. Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts portfolio.
- Sponsor
- Not recorded
- Portfolio
- Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts
Recorded stages
- introduced — 2024-02-15
- second reading — 2024-02-15
- second reading — 2024-03-19
- other — 2024-03-19
- second reading — 2024-03-20
- second reading — 2024-03-20
- other — 2024-03-20
- third reading — 2024-03-20
- introduced — 2024-03-21
- second reading — 2024-03-21
- second reading — 2024-03-25
- second reading — 2024-03-25
- third reading — 2024-03-25
- passed — 2024-03-25
- royal assent — 2024-04-08
Divisions
No divisions recorded. Most questions are decided on the voices; this does not establish that a bill was unopposed.
Plain-language summary
Written by a model from the explanatory memorandum; not the record, as at 2024-02-15.
This bill would let two community television stations in Melbourne and Adelaide keep broadcasting after June 2024.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority would gain power to decide when the stations must stop, after finding another use for their radio spectrum.
The stations would get at least 12 months' notice before any shutdown, and the bill removes a fixed expiry date from the law.
- Removes the 30 June 2024 expiry date for the apparatus licences of C31 and C44.
- Gives ACMA power to declare an alternative use for the spectrum and then set a cessation date, with at least six months between the declaration and the determination.
- Cancels C31's broadcasting services licence when its apparatus licences end.
- Brings both stations under the same Code of Practice regime, allowing a single code from the Australian Community Television Alliance.
The two community television operators C31 in Melbourne and C44 in Adelaide, their audiences, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Sources
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