PM Transcripts

PRESS OFFICE TRANSCRIPT 22 FEBRUARY, 1979
INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR SUSAN RYAN: BENEFITS OF
DOMESTIC SATELLITE
2 2/ 2/ 7 9
Senator Ryan:
Well the Government's being very irresponsible about this
whole proposal. They are allowing country people to believe
that all sorts of communications services, telephone, education
over the air, medical services, will be a part of the
proposal when in fact they are not. They are things that
could happen if the Government was prepared to spend money
on them. To date, of course, the Government's main
strateqy has been to reduce public expenditure in all
those areas. Now they are expecting country people to
believe there will be a massive input of public expenditure
to provide the proqrams which satellite technoloqy could
bring. Question: Why do you say that the public won't really benefit
from domestic satellites?
Senator Ryan:
Because no case has been made that there will. Certainly
big business interests will benefit from the facility to
communicate data. Certainly if a media proprietor were
to get a ndw commercial television network he would benefit
enormously but what it would mean for country viewers is
that one form of television would just be replacedby
another. There wouldn't be more choice. There wouldn't
be better quality and of course if regional broadcasters
are put out of business that would exacerbate the
unemployment in reciional centres. 00