Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If that is your question, I am more than happy to answer it. I would not be at all surprised about that. I am further informed of a matter of history of which the member may not be aware. On one occasion when a former President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, gave an address to the nation, nearly all the newspapers in America had printed two front pages before the speech was made—one applauding it and another condemning it. As the speech ended, the pollsters hit the phones and the community said, ‘We like the one applauding the address,’ and all the newspapers ran that page. You tell me that that was a decision of the media proprietor. Yes, the media proprietors, including Mr Murdoch, had two pages ready and ran the one that they thought the community wanted to hear.

So, if you do not think the community has some effect on that and that it is all in the hands of a single media proprietor, you are mistaken. Also, I know that the ‘single media proprietor’ is not very popular with the Labor Party because in the first instance—and this question is using up your time—he supported Whitlam, because Whitlam promised him that he could import newsprint. Whitlam broke his promise and the proprietor took him to the cleaners the next time. If you want to play those sorts of games, you suffer that sort of problem.

I believe that I have adequately answered that question with historical fact and that I should come back to the comments of the member for Kingsford Smith. It interested me that the member for Kingsford Smith talked about the future of journalists. I think there are two factors to this. If I am a critic of the new legislation, it is because it continues to restrict the issuance of certain licences.

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