Sometime in the 1940s Justice Owen Dixon and Justice George Rich were overheard leaving a concert in Sydney given by an ABC orchestra.
Dixon was Australia’s most pre-eminent judge, noted for his fine powers of reason.
The conversation went something like this:
Rich: Splendid concert, wasn’t it?
Dixon (deep in thought): Oh yes, quite. But I still don’t see what it has got to do with postal, telegraphic, telephonic and other like services.
Those words come from the part of the Constitution that spells out federal powers. Dixon was wondering how the creation by the Federal Government of ABC orchestras and the playing of concerts could possibly be within that head of Federal power.
However, the High Court has held that radio, television and indeed all forms of broadcasting are “”other like services”, even though in 1901, Marconi had not made his first transmission.
Senator Bob Collins, stewing in controversy over pay television, is probably wishing the High Court had ruled the other way.
Indeed, the pay television fiasco (not just the latest bit, but the whole decade and a half of it) will make a fine text-book example of how governmental interference leads to higher costs, delays, uncertainty and poorer service, or in Australia’s case over the past decade no service at all.
There is an entertaining part to it. Senator Collins has been blaming his department, bemoaning the amount of paper that comes across his desk, blaming legal advice from the Attorney-General’s Department and attacking the parliamentary committee that made recommendation on pay television. MPs, concerned citizens, pressure groups, media moguls and others have been wringing their hands, chattering and lambasting. And all the time Australia already has pay television. It is called video.
It was introduced without parliamentary inquiries, without bureaucratic bungling and without ministerial embarrassment. As an industry video pay TV is as big as the other forms. It employs 6000 people, turns over some $600 million a year and occupies between 5 and 10 per cent of viewing time. It cost about $4 billion to set up (given the costs of VCR machines and excluding retail-outlet costs). This is on par with the sort of money we’re talking about for satellite.
The only reason the government did not interfere and make a mess of it, is that the government has no constitutional power to do so. It does have the power with the other services and it has exercised it _ badly. Senator Collins’s effort was only the latest, though among the worst.
Essentially, the legislation required him to set up a price-based tender for satellite pay-TV licences. His department drew up the tender and he signed it. Alas, it did not provide for any deposit, just a $500 tender fee.
It left room for people to bid millions of dollars without having to show they could raise the money, or having to risk losing a deposit if they failed to deliver the money or failed to provide the pay-TV service required by the licence. In all a fairly low-risk investment for some sharp people. They could bid high, get the licence and once holding the licence hope the money came with it, or in essence sell the licence by bringing in equity partners who would ultimately get a majority share.
Collins’s main defence has been that he gets between 200 and 300 ministerials to sign a week, many for tenders for large sums. He has a right to assume they are in the usual form and if they depart for that, that they will be specifically flagged, because in the past the telecommunications and broadcast part of the department has always performed well. Thus he just signed this one.
However, all has not been rosy in his department over the years.
Collins, of course, has had experience in failing to fend off inquiries into the tendering process for multi-million dollar contracts.
Remember the $300 million contract for Australia’s air-traffic control system? It went to the French-based Thomson CSF amid widespread criticism of a lack of Australian involvement and allegations that some Civil Aviation officers had pre-judged the case.
This time last year, Collins was endorsing the actions of the CAA Board. There was no justification for an inquiry, he said. He was totally satisfied with the board’s choice.
Ultimately, there was an inquiry, which found defects in the conduct of CAA officers. Thomson and the other major tenderer, Hughes Aircraft, are now going through a process that amounts to a practical retender. The result: a delay for the air-travelling public in getting a better air-traffic-control system. Not to mention substantial inconvenience and cost to the two top tenderers, especially Thomson which just wanted to get on with the job.
Collins is a learner, though. He didn’t support the bureaucrats this time. He blamed his departmental officers for changing standard procedure without drawing it specifically to his attention. Castigated in the Senate for his failure he pointed to the Opposition saying none of them had any ministerial experience. Hundreds of papers came over a ministerial desk every day. The inference was that he could not attend to the fine detail of all of them.
Surely, a good minister would be able to check the most important once, though (like pay TV)?
He also tried to use the Attorney-General’s Department advice as a scapegoat. (Remember, the Act requires the Minister to draw up a price-based tender.) He attempted to assert that the advice said the Act would not permit deposits because that would amount to prior scrutiny of a bidder and therefore be unfair.
No so. Attorney-General’s was not asked how the tender process should be done. Rather it was presented with two proposals that would have pre-vetted the bidders and asked did they comply with the Act or would they result in excessive legal action by unsuccessful bidders. The advice was that pre-vetting would not be a breach of the Act and would be likely to cause litigation.
So the Executive (department plus Minister) decided to draw up a tender process that not only required no pre-vetting, but did not even require a deposit.
It was clutching at straws to suggest that requiring a deposit would be a departure from a “”price-based” system. Surely, a deposit is fundamental to a “”price-based” system.
Collins has now dumped on two departments. That’s a shift in ground from last year and a shift in ground from 1990 when he sympathised with Immigration officials being foxed by new complex regulations.
You get the feeling that Collins just wants to get things done; that he doesn’t like the ministerial paperwork.
Collins told the Senate of his 10-year experience in Opposition in the Northern Territory and how he had held every shadow ministry.
“”It is an absolute bludge compared to being a Minister,” he said.
Collins is a worker _ 18 hours a day. He needs to work that much; his portfolio covers 110 Acts of Parliament some of them the most complex and most changes outside tax and corporations law.
That sort of bureaucratic complexity must be frustrating to a man of his background.
Collins left school when he was 15 to go share cotton farming at Wee Waa, in mid-north-west NSW. At 19 he went to the Northern Territory after his fiancee broke and engagement.
He worked as a wildlife officer in Kakadu and the treatment of Aboriginal people appalled him. He stood for the NT Assembly, winning Arnhem in 1977.
The next year he married Rosemary Tipiloura, a full-blood Tiwi from Bathurst Island.
It is hard to imagine two places in Australia more different: Canberra’s Parliament House and Bathurst Island. One complex, cold and potentially treacherous, the other simple, open, warm and honest.
Bob Collins goes home to his wife and three children Darwin as often as he can, making him one of the most travelled people in Australia, notching up 350,000 kilometres a year. He uses the travel time to get through paperwork. He can be seen at Darwin Airport VIP lounge’s office sweating away at paperwork, popping out every now and then to top up his coffee and fill his plate with goodies.
He did his politics hard in the Northern Territory. He took on the left in the Labor Party, especially over uranium. He saw that if the NT Labor Party was seen as allowing “”Canberra” to stop mining and export of uranium in the territory it would not get into Government. And if it did not get Government, his aims of doing more for Aboriginal people would not be realised.
He dragged a demoralised party into the semblance of a fighting political team (if such a thing is possible in the NT).
He got incensed at both miners saying Aborigines were being manipulated by the left to oppose uranium and later at the Labor left for saying that miners were manipulating Aborigines to be in favour of it.
As a man who wanted to do things he got frustrated at being in perpetual Opposition, so in August 1986 he stepped down NT Labor Leader to seek pre-selection for the Senate. Again it was a fight. The sitting ALP senator Ted Robertson refused to budge voluntarily. Collins won the pre-selection ballot.
In Federal politics his rise was quick.
“”I guess I’ve been the roughest 100-1 nag that ever put its nose across the line,” he said on entering ministry in April 1990 as Minister for Shipping and Aviation Support.
But he badly overestimated his ability to get things done quickly, promising to resign if he did not get some key reform in the waterfront within a year. Not to worry. Progress on the waterfront was far slower than Collins’ progress politically. After just a short stint in the junior ministry and just five months in the Cabinet he got the top Transport and Communications portfolio in May, 1992.
It helped, of course, to be a Keating supporter.
In Parliament this week, Collins has defended himself by saying that if he had interfered, he would have been on the carpet for that. If he had changed his department’s proposal and insisted on a deposit and only a few bids had come in, just Packer and Murdoch, say, he would have been accused of favouring mates.
It was a fairly lame one, of course. The Act says the Minister is to make the determination, not the department. Besides insisting on a deposit could have been defended as ordinary prudence. And thirdly, he cannot argue that he was snowed with paper work and overlooked it, on one hand, and also argue that he was deliberately keeping things at arms length. One involves not putting his mind to it; the other involves the opposite.
And thus during the week his defences fell like ten-pin bowling pins during the week. And there are several more frames before the match is over.
Collins has been an undoubted asset in his fearlessness and willingness in attacking the issues that have dogged Labor and Liberal Governments: uranium, the third runway, the waterfront and coastal shipping to name a few. Those assets, to date, have been supplemented by a reputation for hard work and attention to detail. In the pay-TV saga the attention-to-detail reputation is at best frayed.
The irony is that it was so unnecessary. Successive Governments have created a restricted licensing monopoly which put up the price of licences artificially _ in effect a tax that will be passed on to consumers. They also wanted to determine delivery systems, programming and number of stations, second-guessing what consumers might want or might pay. It was asking for trouble. Perhaps a deregulated pay television, with a many licences and delivery systems as the households, airwaves and the market would bear would have delivered the goods. It worked with video. The double irony is that that no-fuss process and result would have appealed to a man like Bob Collins.