Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, , 3:42:04 to 3:44:44
The department explains proposed legislative changes to expand audio description and captioning requirements for free-to-air and subscription television services.
Topics: Human rights, Law reform
Speakers: Ms Kate McMullan, Senator Varun Ghosh, Mr Sam Grunhard
Turning now to the proposed communications legislation amendment bill that was announced by the government in August. There's provision in that bill relating to the levels of audio description and captioning in free-to-wear TV, subscription TV and broadcasting video on demand services. Are you able to outline those provisions and the sort of policy goals that they seek to uh seek to achieve?
Thank you. Yes, so um the that bill you're referring to that the government announced had five measures in it to support um broadcasting sustainability and accessibility, and one of those five measures is indeed the change to audio description and captioning requirements. I think my colleague Ms. McMullan will be able to take you through the detail of what's proposed there. Um this is something that we know um the accessibility advocates that we speak to regularly have been asking for, and and the government has recognised that in this announcement.
Uh yes, thank you for uh filibustering uh Kate McMullan, Assistant Secretary, uh Consumer Safeguards and Regulator Governance Branch. Uh yes, as part of their broader communications legislation amendment uh broadcasting sustainability and access uh bill. Um there will be an expansion both to audio description and captioning on free-to-air TV subscription. Like that there's been a call for uh captioning on free-to-air subscription and broadcasting TV. Um the details are uh being settled to some extent, but that the situation at the moment is that audio descriptions available only on ABC and SBS. There's still no uh audio description on commercial television. The the detail of what the minimum required will be, but essentially the legislation will mean that there is a weekly uh minimum requirement of audio description. Um also uh there is uh more captioning on TV, but the rules are quite uh complicated. There are different requirements for uh free-to-air main channels, for free-to-air multi-channels, and for streaming versions of channels. So essentially it's um a little unclear and confusing for viewers about when they can expect uh content to be captioned. The legislation will gradually sort of increase the captioning requirements uh, including the times and the platforms where where captioning will be required. So that uh the ultimate goal is that people should be able to expect that there will be captioning on TV.
Thank you. Um I think that will conclude my question here at this stage. Uh Senator Henderson. Oh, so sorry, Senator Smith.