Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

() (): by leave—I move:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 2, column headed "Provisions"), omit "Schedules 1 and 2", substitute "Schedule 1".

(2) Schedule 2, page 5 (line 1) to page 6 (line 14), omit the Schedule.

This is Groundhog Day! When I was eight months pregnant, we were here moving this exact same amendment to extract the two-out-of-three rule repeal from this. My daughter is now six months old. She is meeting all of her developmental milestones. Yet, this government in four years—a big, fat nothing has been achieved in this space. I will not take lectures from those opposite wanting to talk about Labor being stuck in the past with a 1980s mentality when we have those opposite building a 19th-century copper broadband network. We will not take lectures from those opposite.

Here we have a minister who is so lazy. He says all the facts are known. He completely ignores the ACMA's 'Broken concepts' and 'Enduring concepts' papers. He completely ignores the fact that we had, in the convergence review, the very specific recommendation that we have public interest safeguards inserted for media mergers into the general competition law. But, no, the government ignore all of that. Instead, they seek to ram this through. They say they are getting rid of diversity in order to save it. That is not only the most circular argument but an absolutely ridiculous argument. Labor will stand up for diversity in this parliament and in the other place.

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