ACMA boss Chris Chapman calls for stronger powers

Outgoing media and communications regulator boss Chris Chapman would like to see the industry watchdog given power to direct television networks to broadcast breaches of codes and issue fines.

Australian Communications and Media Authority chairman Mr Chapman, who has seen six prime ministers in his 10 years as the head regulator for the media and communications sector, believes the public and industry would be better served with the addition of "mid-tier" powers in the broadcast space.

"When I look back over 10 years, the piece missing is not in the telco space, or in the radcoms [radio communications] space, but in broadcasting," Mr Chapman told Fairfax Media.

The ACMA can issue infringement notices to telecommunications companies, and mid-tier powers are being looked at in government's spectrum review.

While he believed that the relationship between the ACMA and broadcasters was healthy at the moment, he admitted that in the middle of his tenure, there was tension over some high-profile breach findings – including investigations of Ten over the Californication TV show and Nine's Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities.

"There was a consistent authority response in way of breach findings. The sanctions that followed that exacerbated that tension because we didn't have a tool kit that did justice to addressing breaches, whether they be of codes, or licence conditions, expeditiously or efficiently," Mr Chapman said.

Mr Chapman said an infringement notice system for TV and/or the ability to order broadcasters to air the breaches on the same show that they occurred on would enable both the regulator and industry to simply act and move on.

"I'm not seeking they spook the horse demanding that there be mid-tiers, I'm just suggesting that it's much better going forward to have a more collaborated tool kit so that you can move on more effective, efficiently and in a more timely way."

Code breaches

In 2013, the ACMA found that Nine's A Current Affair had breached codes of practice. The free-to-air broadcaster responded by taking the regulator's recommendation to air the breaches on the show.

"We breached them for a number of code breaches and we recommended to the Nine Network that they publish that and essentially what we were saying is that if you do that then we'll consider the file closed," Mr Chapman said.

"[David] Gyngell [former Nine chief executive], to his great credit, did that. I think he's very smart because it underscores your brand equity and reinforces to your audience transparency and a sense trust and honesty."

Mr Chapman, who worked at Seven and Optus before joining the ACMA, said he was leaving the regulator proud of what it had achieved over the past decade, including many consumer protections such as the Do Not Call register, online safety and investigation measures and phishing scam alerts.

"It's done its day job for 10 years in a fiscally responsible way, and raised over $11 billion in revenues."

Mr Chapman said that by making the regulator more efficient in the way it did its work had created better relationships with industry.

The number of investigations was trending down, the breaches per investigation were marginally trending down, Mr Chapman said, and the ACMA had, on average, reduced the time taken to complete an investigation from 4.6 months to 1.8 months.

If he had his time again, Mr Chapman said he would push to have a more transparent regulator and that some of the decisions and rulings made by ACMA could have been better explained.

Mr Chapman, who finishes up at the ACMA at the end of February and will become president of the International Institute of Communications, said he was not worried about the government's review into the regulator and welcomed it as an opportunity to shape the watchdog in an ever-evolving landscape.

"The second aspect of the review is what a future regulator should look like. That's a very ambitious program. It's one we welcome again because we have pointed out more than anybody in Australia the deficiencies of the current legislative and regulatory construct."

Asked about the changes to media ownership laws being considered by the government, Mr Chapman said it was a matter for Communications Minister Mitch Fifield but noted that the landscape had been changing rapidly for almost two decades.

"The reality of digital, the enablement of internet protocol has fundamentally changed the dynamics and business models of broadcasters and telecommunications companies. That started 20 years ago, but it's just in the last five years that the realities of those have started to hit home."