A battle in the fight for the recovery of Millicent’s 5THE FM has been won, but the war will rage on, as they face the aftermath of investigations into the station.
There is change in the air-waves, with a new committee taking over the reins, but they will have their work cut out for them as they face the outcomes of investigations by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and Consumer and Business Services (CBS).
The outcomes of the two ACMA investigations into the station were published last Friday, finding the station in breach of several parts of the code.
The station was reported to ACMA by members of the public after multiple attempts were made to contact the station with no response.
One complaint alleged that the station failed to comply with licence conditions in the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA) due to it’s lack of a functioning board.
In that complaint, the report states that “ACMA finds that the licensee is not encouraging members of the community to participate in the operations of its service, and accordingly has breached paragraph 9(2)(c)(i) of Schedule 2 to the BSA.”
“The licensee has demonstrated it takes some steps to promote membership and volunteering,” the report states.
“However, notwithstanding the impacts of COVID-19, and the small licence area that the service is located in, membership numbers are low.
“Over the previous two years 5THE has not operated in accordance with the corporate governance requirements set out by its constitution in relation to holding AGMs, and subsequently has not provided the opportunity for members to nominate for management committee positions.
“5THE has also been unable to provide recent financial records.
“The ACMA is of the view that due to the concerns with the soundness of the licensee’s corporate governance processes, including both the provisions of the constitution and the failure to act in accordance with the constitution, the licensee has breached paragraph 9(2)(c)(i) of Schedule 2 to the BSA.”
In the second investigation, the station was reported to ACMA due to a complaint that no response was received after a complaint was made to the station.
“The ACMA complaint raised, among other things, concerns that a complaint had been made to 5THE on 22 November 2021 (5THE complaint) and no response had been received,” the report states.
“The 5THE complaint addressed an issue covered by the Community Radio Broadcasting Codes of Conduct 2008 (the Codes).
“The 5THE complaint stated that coverage of the Millicent saleyards by 5THE contained inaccurate and misleading statements.”
In that investigation, ACMA found the station to be in breach of Code 7.3 (c) of the Codes.
The reports were released just one day after a special general meeting where a vote of no confidence in the previous committee was passed unanimously, and a new committee was elected.
David Walshaw was elected as chairperson, Michael Schultz as treasurer and secretary Megan Brennan and joining them on the board will be Ian Harrison, Ken lane, Chris Copeland and Paul McRobert.
John McLoughlin will remain as public officer for the immediate future, to assist with the changes.
The board got to work quickly, with locks being changed on Friday.
Mr Walshaw said the first task for the committee was working towards correcting issues discovered through the investigations.
“The Community Broadcasting Association has alerted us to the fact that CBS were going to deregister the association, which would be awful, because we’d have to start all over again,” he said.
“We’ve sent them off the minutes of the AGM and the board members, their qualifications and all that sort of stuff, so hopefully, they can see now that the session is in good hands, and it is going to be positive moving forward.
“What we’ve got to do is look at the omissions that the ACMA have picked up in their investigation, we’ve got to make sure that we correct all those.
“We will be talking about governance and engagement and a whole range of things and making sure we have appropriate committee structures, First up, first thing is making sure our corporate governance is okay and our finances are where they need to be.
“We’re now looking at our policies and our procedures that support our operations – we’ve formed a small subcommittee to look at on-air content.
“That group is now looking at how we put the station back on the air. So they’ve got skills in programming, and on air activity, so what they’re gonna do is start to put together a schedule of what local content might look like over the next couple of weeks.
“Now, we’re not gonna be able to jump straight to 24/7 broadcasting, obviously, but we want get started off next week with five or six local sessions, and then gradually build up from there as the volunteers come on board – we’ve got over 60 signed up already. That’s really positive.”
“There’s just been overwhelming support from the community down here to get that station back on air and functioning as it should be.”
