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A funny thing happened on the way to abolishing the BSA…
By Steven | October 12, 2026
As you’ll know, the current government has decided to scrap the Broadcasting Standards Authority. This would happen after the election. But last month they introduced a Bill that would do the trick.
One little-noticed effect of doing away with the BSA is that it would also subject all broadcasters to the Privacy Act. Under current law, broadcasters who fall under the BSA complaints regime are exempted from the Privacy Act when conducting news activities. If this was removed it would mean, among other things, that someone featuring in a TV or radio story (or someone who gets wind of the fact that they’re going to be in one) can demand access to all the information the broadcaster holds that’s about them. There are exceptions, but they are narrow – much narrower than those in the Official Information Act.
Broadcasters hate this idea. They think – with good reason – that it would undermine their ability to report news. They lobbied to be exempt from the Privacy Act. (I remember writing a column about it at the time, saying that when the Privacy Act – including the media – was first mooted, the media stood like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria intoning “You shall not pass!”). They succeeded. Broadcasters that were subject to the BSA’s complaints jurisdiction got a special exemption from the Privacy Act.
But now… no more BSA, no more exemption.
There’s more. In removing the broadcasters’ exemption, the new Bill also removes… print media’s exemption (check out section 28). That’s newspapers, magazines, some news sites, blogs and substacks. The Privacy Act currently grants their news activities immunity from the strictures of the Privacy Act if they’re subject to the Media Council’s complaints regime. But for some reason, that’s been removed too. So all mainstream media may face a barrage of Privacy Act requests from people they’re writing about.
It’s worse than that. Broadcasters and print media will also be subject to a range of rules that were not designed with them in mind. So, if they gather material for one purpose, they have to use it for that purpose, or a directly related one. They can’t use it for a different purpose. They can only gather information in a way that’s fair and not unreasonably intrusive. If they gather information about someone from a third party, they may have to tell the person what’s happening.
Ah, you’re saying, having diligently followed the link above and read section 28. (Graeme Edgeler, I see you). The government can pass regulations recognising any media “regulatory” body (presumably ethics complaints bodies), and members of those bodies will be exempt from the Privacy Act, when they’re gathering news.
Yes. The government can do that. But that provision has always been there. It has never been used. There are no media ethics complaints bodies recognised by regulation. The BSA and the Media Council were expressly listed in the Privacy Act, so no special regulations needed to be passed to cover their members. But the new Bill removes the express listing of the BSA and the Media Council, so the only media organisations that get an exemption will be those recognised by regulation. And at the moment, there aren’t any.
True, the government can pass some regulations in a hurry so that they come into force at the same time as the law abolishing the BSA comes into force. I’d expect them to do that. I’d expect the Media Council to be recognised like that.
But at the moment, the Media Council does not hear complaints about broadcast content (except in relation to classification of programmes – content warnings, etc). It’s not resourced to hear substantially more complaints than it already does. Its code of ethics was written with text-based journalism in mind. The journalist members of its complaints board are all print journalists. Some broadcasters have signed up to the Media Council. But that’s for classification decisions. The Media Council doesn’t hear complaints about their news programmes. So broadcasters’ news programmes are not *looks at the wording of section 28* “subject to the oversight” of the Media Council. That would mean they are subject to the Privacy Act.
So there’s a big gap. And even if the government passes regulations recognising the Media Council, it’s not clear that the Media Council is in a position to hear complaints about broadcasters’ news and current affairs content. It’s not even clear that it will accept broadcasters as members for that purpose.
Officials have pointed this out. “The key assumption underpinning this analysis is that the Media Council will assume responsibility (and develop new processes and functions) for standards and complaints about their members’ broadcast content”, they say in the Regulatory Impact Statement. It’s not clear whether or how this will happen. The Quality Assurance Statement for the RIS says, “There is a largely untested assumption that self-regulation by broadcasters can be effective. The RIS also assumes a coherence of regulatory roles amongst relevant entities, some which are mandated and some voluntary.”
That warning goes beyond the small point I’m making here about the Privacy Act. But the bottom line is the same. The government seems to be expecting a lot of the Media Council. And there’s no indication in the government’s documents that they even want the job.
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