After more than 11 years in the Communications portfolio, Senator Richard Alston stepped down this week in a cabinet reshuffle. Former Attorney General Daryl Williams will take his place as Communications Minister.

Alston had been planning to step aside for “some months” due to “heavy time demands and long periods away from home,” so he says the reshuffle presented the opportunity for him to do so.

“I indicated that I was aware that he was contemplating a reshuffle and that I would be happy to stand down at a time of his choosing,” said Alston.

“I have been particularly fortunate to be able to serve in an area of policy which I have always regarded as the most exciting and interesting portfolio of all.
“I take particular pride in the fact that Australia’s enthusiastic adoption and effective use of ICT, underpinned by Australia’s information industries, has transformed many traditional industry sectors and has played a large part in Australia’s achievement of world-leading economic growth and productivity improvements.”

Commenting on the changes during his time at the helm, Alston said: “In March 1996 there was little or no competition in telecommunications… the information technology industry was not seen as a priority while the internet was only for academics and geeks. There was no such thing as digital TV. SBS, the ABC and community broadcasters were far less accessible, Pay TV was in its infancy and many Australians resided in TV blackspots…”

While the former Minister was upbeat about his achievements in the communications portfolio, not all his critics were of the same mind.

The Shadow Minister for Communications, Lindsay Tanner, said Senator Alston is “abandoning ship as his communications portfolio sinks in a series of
policy disasters.”

He is leaving behind “an uncompetitive telecommunications
regime, soaring phone line rental fees, internationally embarrassing broadband take-up rates, a fiasco in digital television and a vicious government war against the ABC,” according to Tanner.

Friends of the ABC spokesperson Terry Laidler is also not sad to see Senator Alston go, saying: “Friends of the ABC welcomes the removal of Senator Alston from the position of Minister for Communications… [his] record has been disgraceful with regard to the ABC.”

”The Minister responsible for the national public broadcaster should support independent and comprehensive public broadcasting and advocate on its behalf. Instead, Senator Alston has sought to interfere in the ABC’s independence and to undermine the broadcaster at every opportunity.

”Friends of the ABC’s worry is that Senator Alston should have been replaced long ago if there was a genuine change in the government’s hostile attitude toward the ABC… Friends of the ABC wishes Mr Williams well and will judge him on his merits,” said Laidler.

Asked at a press conference: which of his achievements he was most proud of, Alston said:

“Despite the fact that we haven’t quite got there yet with Telstra privatisation, certainly T1 and T2 involved a lot of delicate negotiations in the Senate arguing the case in what was probably a much more hostile environment at that time. So that’s one of the very big ticket items.

But there have been quite a number of areas. I always think that allowing for parallel importation of CDs, for example, was a major policy break-through, because the Labor Government had lost its nerve on that front and we stayed the course, and with the full support of the colleagues we got through what I think was a very important change, and that’s been borne out in a number of other areas.

Black spots might be relatively low profile, but I found many thousands of Australians who were just resigned to having very poor or non-existent television coverage, sometimes not so far from the metropolitan areas, and to have been able to break the back of that problem again I think is a very substantial achievement.

Regional and rural Australia for years languished almost as a backwater where they had to wait for things to trickle down from metro areas. We’ve spent over a billion dollars in the last five years on regional and rural infrastructure, and again I think that’s made a phenomenal difference to the way in which all Australians have been able to access new technology.”

Asked whether he thought he had unfinished business with the ABC he said:

“In terms of the ABC, I think I actually take quite a deal of comfort out of the debate that’s occurred over the last six months, because I think overwhelmingly Australians now expect the ABC to live within its means like everyone else has to and they also expect it to be accountable and they expect it to have arms length processes in place.

Now I think there’s still work to be done on that front, but none the less, I think it’s again a very important area of government policy. We are firmly committed to a high quality alternative to the commercials. We firmly believe in the ABC, we renewed its funding on an indexed basis at the last budget, but having said that the ABC is not immune from the normal expectations of taxpayers and nor should it be. And I certainly think there’s progress to be made there as there is on a number of other fronts, but that’s for others, that’s why the work of government rolls on, because it’s an endlessly fascinating and challenging area of responsibility.”

On that issue, the Friends of the ABC also had something to say in a letter to the editor of radioinfo:

“Christopher Pyne, head of the Coalition’s communications committee, proposes the ABC Act be changed to enable the broadcaster to carry advertising and to introduce a subscription service to raise funds (Sunday Age 28.9.03).

Mr Pyne’s ideas do not arise from a government inability to fund the ABC. The federal budget surplus was massive. Funds allocated to the ABC are minimal in overall government expenditure, $500 million per annum … less than one per cent of the Commonwealth Budget.

If introduced, advertising and sponsorship would undermine the ABC’s capacity to report without fear or favour. Programming would be distorted by the need to attract commercial revenue…

Mr Pyne has not succeeded in shifting blame away from a government that broke its election promise to maintain ABC funding. But I fear he has given the community an insight into the ABC’s future if the Coalition wins control of the Senate at the next election and is able to change the ABC Act.”

Writing in the Age recently Alan Kohler editorialised about Senator Alston’s role in implementing digital tv broadcasting:

Richard Alston has been known as the minister (now ex-minister) for non-achievement: Telstra was not fully privatised, the media rules were not changed and television has not gone digital.

But actually Alston is taking off just as digital TV takes off. In the first six months of this year, sales of set-top boxes were 7000 a month; in July and August, 32,000 were sold. There are now 145,000 boxes in Australian homes.