Helen Coonan

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Senator The Honourable
 Helen Lloyd Coonan
 BA, LLB (Syd)
Helen Coonan
In office
18 July 2004 – 3 December 2007
Preceded by Daryl Williams
Succeeded by Stephen Conroy
Senator for New South Wales
Incumbent
Assumed office 
1 July 1996
Born 29 October 1947 (1947-10-29) (age 60)
Mangoplah, New South Wales
Political party Liberal Party of Australia
Spouse Andrew Rogers [1]
Occupation Barrister/Solicitor

Helen Lloyd Coonan (born 29 October 1947), Australian politician, has been a Liberal member of the Australian Senate since July 1996, representing New South Wales.

Contents

[edit] Early life

She was born in Mangoplah, New South Wales, attended the Mount Erin convent Catholic boarding school in Wagga,[2] and was educated at the University of Sydney, where she gained a law degree. She was a barrister and solicitor before entering politics. She was Chair of the Board of Governors of the Law Foundation of New South Wales (1991 - 1992).

[edit] Member of Parliament

In 1996, Helen Coonan was elected to the federal Senate as a Liberal senator for New South Wales. She was re-elected in 2001 and appointed Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer (2001 - 2004).

[edit] Inspector-General of Taxation

As Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer, Coonan appointed Mr David R Vos AM as the first Inspector-General of Taxation during August 2003; following from the passage of the Inspector-General of Taxation Bill 2002 and providing an adviser to government in the interests of taxpayers.[3]

[edit] Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts

Coonan was appointed Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, with a seat in the Cabinet, in July 2004. Her portfolio was responsible for overseeing the Australian broadcasting and telecommunications industries as well as the ICT sector and Australia Post. Coonan was also the Senior Minister responsible for the Arts. She became Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate in January 2006 and remained in that role until the coalition was defeated at the polls on 24 November 2007.

[edit] Digital Television

In July 2004, Australia was in a transitional phase: digital television was broadcast in parallel to the old analog television signals. The stated plan was full handover to digital by 2008 and shutdown of all analog television broadcast.

[edit] Summary of Television Bandwidth Allocation

Under existing analogue television technology, each channel consumes 7 MHz of bandwidth in either VHF or UHF bands (usually VHF). New digital television uses the same size channels, also within the VHF and UHF bands. In many cases, the current digital and analogue simulcast for a given station operates on adjacent channels. For example, Sydney VHF channel 9 (old analogue) is duplicated as a digital broadcast on VHF channel 8. Most digital broadcasts also make use of a secondary transmission in the UHF band to ensure full coverage (thus, three copies of the same program are being broadcast).[4]

[edit] Review to Drive Digital Take-Up

In September 2005, Coonan announced a review of the digital television situation. It was noted that the government had spent 1 billion dollars supporting the change from analog TV to digital TV. The current plan to switch off analog TV by 2008 in metropolitan areas and by 2011 in regional markets was unlikely to be workable because takeup of digital receivers had been poor.[5][6]

[edit] Digital Australia

The minister supervised the creation of "Digital Australia", a new federally funded government body for coordinating the transition to digital television. [7] Andrew Townend (former COO of Digital UK) was appointed executive director in 2007.[8]. Initiatives will include public education, and the introduction of labeling regulations for television receivers. Subsidies for the elderly have been discussed but no commitment has yet been made.

[edit] Digital Radio

In October 2005, Coonan released a plan for a staged rollout of Digital Audio Broadcasting using the "Eureka 147" technology, starting in metropolitan areas. There was no plan to phase out analog radio, but a 6 year moratorium on new BSB licenses was announced.[9][10]

[edit] Media Ownership

Coonan was instrumental in promoting legislative changes to the cross-media and foreign ownership laws in the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2006. The changes relaxed restrictions against cross-media ownership or control by a single company.

[edit] Internet Filtering

As far back as December 2004, Senator Coonan was under pressure from the religious conservative lobby, in particular Senator Harradine.[11]

In 1999 the government introduced measures to counter the growing problem of offensive material on the Net when it introduced a comprehensive regulatory scheme which banned X-rated and restricted classification, or RC, material. As part of the program, the government also established NetAlert—which Senator Harradine is well aware of—to help children and families use and enjoy the Internet in a safe and responsible way.

Her answer demonstrated that mandatory filtering was under consideration.

Senator Harradine asked about mandatory filtering systems. Under the industry code of practice introduced by the government, all Australian Internet service providers are required to provide content filters for their customers at cost price or below. These tools allow parents to actively control the access their children have to the Internet from the family computer and to have some degree of confidence about the safety of their children online.

Coonan also announced in August 2007 a $189 million package for the NetAlert programme. NetAlert is an ISP level Internet content filtering system designed to filter the Internet for 'safe' use in Australia. It represented a change from her 2006 policy to allow the ISP to remain a neutral carrier and encourage parents to install filters on their home PC, commenting at the time that "PC-based filtering remains the most effective way of protecting children from offensive Internet content, as well as other threats that are not addressed by Labor’s ISP-filtering proposals."[12] Tom Wood, a 16 year old schoolboy from Melbourne, took only 30 minutes to find a way to bypass the expensive filtering system. An additional filter was made available shortly after which Tom cracked within 40 minutes.[13][14]

[edit] Federal support for the arts

Part of Helen Coonan's ministerial responsibility was to oversee support for the Arts in Australia (a responsibility shared with George Brandis, Minister for the Arts and Sport).

Film and television financing in Australia has included generous government support since the 1970's. Similarly, music, fine arts and sport have also benefited from government funds. [15]

[edit] Computer games industry appeal for federal funding

The Game Developers' Association of Australia (GDAA) has appealed to Senator Coonan for its share of Arts funding to encourage the growing computer games industry in Australia.[16] To date, this appeal has not resulted in any change of policy and computer games are not considered an artform worthy of financial support by the Australian federal government. [17]

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mark Riley, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 2002, PM defends Coonan's getaway
  2. ^ The Age, August 14, 2005, Call me Coonan the agrarian...
  3. ^ Background information on Inspector-General of Taxation. Commonwealth Government of Australia.
  4. ^ DBA Installer Q&A. Digital Broadcasting Australia.
  5. ^ (2005-09-25). "Review to drive digital take-up". Press release.
  6. ^ "Slow response may delay digital TV switch off", Fairfax. 
  7. ^ "Coonan flags digital plans", News Ltd, 2006-11-23. 
  8. ^ Australian government looks OS for digital solution.
  9. ^ (2005-10-14). "Framework for the Introduction of Digital Radio". Press release.
  10. ^ "The Digital Difference", Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2005-10-20. 
  11. ^ “QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: Communications: Child Pornography”, Senate Hansard: 68, 2004-12-01, <http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/view_document.aspx?ID=2029565&TABLE=HANSARDS> 
  12. ^ (2006-03-21). "Labor very late to the Internet filtering debate". Press release.
  13. ^ Nick Higginbottom and Ben Packham. "Student cracks $84m porn filter", 2007-08-25. 
  14. ^ Tom Wood (October 2007). The Wood Verdict. Retrieved on 2007-11-24.
  15. ^ All funding, programs and support.
  16. ^ GDAA. 40% Rebate Petition.
  17. ^ Mike Bantick. "Australian games industry step up industry rebate campaign", 2007-09-13. 
Political offices
Preceded by
Daryl Williams		 Minister for Communications,
Information Technology and the Arts
2004 – 2007		 Succeeded by
Stephen Conroy
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