John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I seek leave to respond to one point that the member for Hinkler made at the outset of his contribution. If I understood it correctly he made the point that he believed that the committee was fair to the existing free-to-air players and was not advocating for the introduction of a fourth free-to-air television licence to provide a further free-to-air television network in Australia. I only wanted to make the point in the context of the whole of the government’s media policy that you have people like John Singleton who would like to have a fourth free-to-air television licence in Australia which would be 100 per cent Australian content. That would be a good thing.

I know the member for Hinkler is aware of my bona fides in relation to this policy because, when I was a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and the Arts in the 39th Parliament, we got along so well that I was anointed—I would not say this at my local branches!—as an honorary member of The Nationals. The member for Hinkler conducted the communication inquiries very well, but he will clearly recall that I wanted to initiate an inquiry into media ownership even at that stage, before the government announced that it was going to reform our media ownership laws and deregulate the laws to allow a media proprietor to own television stations, radio stations and newspapers, all in the one market. This was against a background of no-one else being allowed to have a fourth free-to-air television licence and the two biggest players—Mr Murdoch and Mr Packer—having the monopoly on pay television.

I am sincerely concerned about that. I know the member for Hinkler is as well, because he has spoken about this. I am not sure whether the member for Lindsay has, but I know the member for Hinkler has because of the nature of the media in his electorate in Queensland. It is something that all of us should have a serious look at. I really hope that out of this debate today—I pay tribute to the member for Lindsay for the job that she did on this committee—the member for Hinkler can get some honest debate going on his backbench. I talked to many members of the government. Mr Packer and Mr Murdoch would chew and spit all of us out when it suited them, and that is just not in the public interest. It is not good for our democracy. I would like to see so many more media owners in Australia so that we might get greater diversity of news and information. That can only be very healthy for the public interest and the future of our democracy. I am grateful for the opportunity to make these few comments, and I commend the member for Lindsay and the committee for the work they have done in this area.

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