Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2006. This bill would remove the current rules which prevent the common ownership of newspapers, radio and television stations in the same media market. People listening to this debate might wonder: what on earth is all the fuss about; why is Labor so adamantly opposed to changes to the cross-media ownership laws? Any change to media ownership in this country, any concentration of media ownership in this country, changes what happens and what is said in our media. It changes editorial opinion, it changes views and it concentrates views and opinions in our media. The less media opinion, the fewer voices you have speaking to the Australian public and the less opportunity for the Australian public to participate in our democracy and learn about what is happening within this parliament. If you only have the concentration of a few voices and a few editorial opinions, you do not necessarily get the full picture of what is happening across a number of issues.

This bill tries to impose a five voices in metropolitan media test and a four voices in regional centres test for media mergers. Media mergers will be allowed as long as five commercial media voices remain in mainland state capital markets or four voices in regional markets. But the definition of what constitutes a voice is extremely broad. It includes a television licensee, a radio licensee, a newspaper associated with that radio licence area or a company that includes any combination of those assets. The practicality of this in some areas is that a voice could include, for example, a racing broadcaster—that is all that particular licensee does—a sports broadcaster or they could just have a licence for a music station.

Whilst I support the need for race calls for people in the electorate of Ballarat, as someone who supports and likes the racing industry, it is hardly a diverse source of news or current affairs. The government’s two out of three rule coupled with the idea that racing broadcasters constitute a current affairs or news voice mean that a media owner could theoretically own the only general news media in a community by merging the newspaper and a television station.

In exchange for this weakening of diversity, the Howard government is proposing new licensee conditions that relate to local content. The National Party, whose support has been bought for this bill, have agreed to these new conditions, and, quite frankly, have been sold a pup. The government has tried to sell them a pup on the issue of local content to get them to support this bill.

This bill also seeks to abolish the foreign ownership provisions in the current Broadcasting Services Act. There are five main reasons why I oppose this bill and its radical changes to Australia’s media industry. Firstly, the bill is not about media diversity. Despite the government’s rhetoric about diversity, this bill does nothing to protect media diversity; it is more about cosying up to the big media interests and getting them on side before the next election. Secondly, the bill will, in fact, reduce diversity. That anyone could possibly argue that going from 12 to six owners in Sydney, or six to four in the case of my own electorate of Ballarat, would increase diversity is a disgraceful misrepresentation of reality. That reduction in our diversity is bad for our democracy.

Thirdly, under this bill we will see a reduction of local content. While schedule 2 imposes obligations on regional radio broadcasters to broadcast minimum levels of local news and other types of local content, the reality once again diverges from the rhetoric. Local content will suffer as fewer owners mean greater consolidation of newsrooms, fewer journalists and less competition in local markets. Fourthly, this bill is bad for regional areas. It will have a significant impact on media diversity in regional areas. A reduction in media owners will see newsrooms close—and the associated advertising and employment that it generates will be reduced—radio stations potentially merged and newspapers slashing both their administrative and their journalistic staff. These are highly specialised and well paid jobs and they are not easily replaced in regional communities.

Finally, I stand against this bill in the hope that it may encourage some of the members of the National Party who claim to represent regional Australia to develop a backbone for once. The electors in rural and regional Australia deserve better representation in this House than what they have got from the Nationals currently, who have done nothing for regional Australia by supporting this bill in the Senate.

To return to my first point, this bill is not about increasing or even protecting diversity in the Australian media market. We should remember that this is not the first time that we have debated this bill in this place. It is not the first time that the Howard government has tried to change the cross-media ownership laws. It is in fact not even the second time. For many of us who have spoken in this debate previously, it feels a little like groundhog day yet again. The first two times that we debated this sort of bill in this place, the Senate saw through the government’s smokescreen and ended the Howard government’s attempts to consolidate the Australian media market in the hands of two main operators. The Senate proposed significant amendments to the legislation and it did not get through.

The difference this time is that the Howard government has managed to buy off the support of the National Party and the so-called independent Family First senator Stephen Fielding. Senator Fielding’s naive belief that media ownership and editorial opinion have no relationship to one another is touching in its absolute innocence. If this were not such a serious issue it would be touching to think that Senator Fielding actually believes that media ownership and editorial opinion are two different things. I wish the world was like that, Senator Fielding, but it is not. The National Party has decided to sell out regional Australians to keep grasping at what little power it can within the coalition, and Senator Fielding is simply continuing down his chosen path of kowtowing to the Liberal Party.

The government should be honest about what they are trying to achieve with this bill. Rather than trying to fool the Australian people into believing that they have the best interests of media diversity at heart, they should come out and tell people that their big business mates do not like having to share the advertising revenue pie with smaller players in the market. Where competition for the advertising dollar is fierce, this bill is really about reducing the number of owners in a market and consolidating advertising revenue in the hands of a few large companies.

The real purpose of this bill is to water down the cross-media ownership rules. It is aimed at providing the two big media players in Australia with an opportunity to tighten their stranglehold on Australia’s media outlets—a stranglehold that continues to use its influence in making and shaping opinion in the way that we as a community view aspects of local, national and world events. The government changes will lead to a massive concentration of media ownership in regional and metropolitan markets. The government’s five-four test does not protect diversity, and the number of owners could essentially be halved in Sydney and reduced by a third in my own electorate of Ballarat.

This brings me to my second point. This bill reduces the diversity of media in Australia. These changes are not in the public’s interest. There is no case to be made that reducing the number of owners of media in Australia will improve the range of views and opinions that Australians have access to. This bill in fact does completely the opposite. Media diversity is an essential part of our democracy. It makes sure that a wide range of views and opinions are put before the Australian public. Currently in my own electorate of Ballarat we have a diverse range of commercial media outlets, including the Ballarat Courier, owned by Rural Press; 3BA and Power FM, owned by Grant Broadcasters, one of a few independent broadcasters left in this country; WIN TV; Southern Cross TV; and 3BT, a sport broadcaster owned by a Sydney based company. Prime TV continues to have a small presence.

If the Howard government gets its way, there will be a reduction of outlets in the media market in my electorate. The largest will survive and the smallest will simply be merged. The provisions of this bill, under schedule 1, would allow, for example, Rural Press to buy a TV or radio station in Ballarat. This would be an unhealthy consolidation of media power in my electorate. The morning newspaper could be running exactly the same news and editorial opinion as the evening TV bulletin. When you consider that talkback radio is already dominated locally by issues that are run in the local newspapers and on TV news, a clear picture emerges of just how dominant these single players could possibly be. I understand that Rural Press support these changes, and it is no wonder that they support these changes. Rural Press are very keen to get their hands on as much advertising revenue as they possibly can. I understand that it is in their interest to do so. It is not in the interests of Australian democracy that they do so.

By world standards we already have a highly concentrated media market. What the Prime Minister has done with these laws is concentrate even more power in the hands of some of the most powerful people in this country, and that cannot be good for Australia’s democracy. The Howard government has claimed that the internet allows for diversity of opinion to exist regardless of these changes. The reality is that the research just does not support this proposition. Recent figures showed that big established media players dominate the internet media market. In terms of internet use and advertising, they have 70 per cent of the total market, with Fairfax at 33 per cent, News Ltd at 24 per cent and PBL at 13 per cent. The ACCC Chairman, Graeme Samuel, has told the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts:

The internet is simply a distribution channel. It has not shown any significant signs at this point in time of providing a greater diversity of credible information, news and commentary.

Normally we, in this House, would look to the Senate to provide an in-depth inquiry into such large-scale reforms so that their impact could be truly tested. However, those National senators, not keen on having the truth about their position exposed to the cold light of day, helped the Howard government to severely limit the inquiry into this bill. As Senator Wortley pointed out in the other place:

The issue of time was raised by a number of witnesses, including the Screen Producers Association of Australia, Premier Media Group, Commercial Radio Australia, the ACCC and the Communications Law Centre. We provided reasons why two days were not long enough to hear and question the witnesses, but again the government’s arrogance won the day.

The limited inquiry did hear from Private Media Partners, who said:

We do not believe there is any justification on public policy grounds for the government to abolish or amend the current cross-media restrictions.

Such a change, in our view, could result in a dangerous increase in the power of existing media companies to influence Australia’s public and political agenda.

Mr Beecher said in his submission to the inquiry:

The new laws are constructed for industry consolidation, which is likely to result in acquisitions by existing media owners of existing Australian media assets.

We have already seen the speculation in the media of this being exactly the case. The bill has not even passed this parliament, the ink is not even dry on the Governor-General’s signature, and speculation about those major consolidations is already out there in the media.

So there is strong evidence to suggest that diversity will be weakened rather than improved by this bill. The National Party’s support for limiting the time available to the Senate inquiry speaks volumes about the third reason why I am opposed to this bill. As Mr Beecher told the Senate inquiry:

Removing or weakening the cross-media rules will result in fewer journalists and diminished journalism.

Fewer journalists in regional areas mean job losses. Highly skilled and highly specialised jobs will be stripped out of regional communities with no hope of being replaced. In an attempt to placate the communities who have cried out against these changes the government has included mandated local content. The provisions of this bill on mandated local content are an absolute fraud. They are subject to an inquiry which was agreed to by the government as a sop to the National Party to get this bill up. If the National Party honestly think they will get a fair dinkum inquiry on local content from this government then they are bigger mugs than I thought they were. The government is already going around behind the scenes saying that it will ditch the local content rules.

This knee-jerk reaction has occurred without industry consultation and is already leading to confusion. Alison O’Neill, a director of Grant Broadcasters, the owners of 3BA in my electorate, told us that they were of the belief that they would need to broadcast at least four hours of matters of local importance everyday. The intention is to try and keep local radio in local areas, not to simply fill the airwaves. To quote Ms O’Neill, ‘We won’t be able to play music because it’s hardly a matter of local importance.’ This potentially will make them commercially unappealing to advertisers. This local content law does not compensate for the concentration of media owners, which is what the government appears to have tried to do. There is apprehension in local media outlets about what the future will be when this bill comes into law. Which outlets will close and which will remain open is a major concern that hangs over the regional media companies, like Grant Broadcasters, and their staff. For the sake of a law that is confusing and poorly conceived, local communities stand to lose valuable local jobs and important local voices.

Local people’s involvement in media provides a valuable way for our communities to get involved in policy debate and our democracy more widely. The differences of opinion expressed in the Ballarat Courier, on 3BA radio and on our TV stations help to stimulate the lively debates we have on politics in Ballarat. Letters to the editor on issues as diverse as water and skills shortages are often debated on talkback radio and then discussed on local television. We have already seen a reduction in local content. People from my electorate who travel around this country will be somewhat bemused by the fact that, on one TV media outlet, their local newsreader in Ballarat, who basically reads out press releases—sometimes the ones I send in, which is a great thing—is also the local newsreader here in Canberra. I am pretty sure she is the local newsreader in pretty much every other regional, country and metropolitan town across the country. She is a very mobile newsreader. I do not know how she does it; she gets around a fair bit. These laws will only further serve to reduce local content.

My final point relates to the cowardice shown by the members of the National Party in not rejecting this bill and in not standing up to the Howard government on this bill in the Senate. The bill is bad for regional Australia, it is bad for regional communities and it is bad for regional democracy. Yet the National Party, the self-proclaimed defenders of regional Australia, have pledged to support this bill. National Party senators could have torpedoed this bill by doing the honourable thing and standing with Labor Party senators when the bill was voted on in the Senate. Instead, they went weak at the knees and caved in when the government offered them a sop on local content and media ownership which will not protect regional media from the big media players. The National Party has yet again failed to provide regional Australians with the representation they deserve. The Nationals have failed to protect regional media outlets, they have failed to protect regional voices and they have failed to protect regional jobs.

No-one representing a regional area should be supporting this bill. I cannot support this bill because it is not about preserving media diversity; it is about reducing it. It is about the Howard government concentrating media ownership in the hands of a small number of media owners. This bill reduces the number of outlets that the community has in which to debate ideas and opinions and to form views. That can only be bad for our democracy. Despite the attempts to protect local content, this bill will see a reduction in genuine local content and no number of government inquiries will prevent this. There has been no consultation with the media industry and the proposed regulations on local content are vague at best while being counterproductive at worst for some media outlets.

The National Party’s complete failure to stand up for regional Australia has once again meant that they have put the interests of their political masters in the Liberal Party ahead of the interests of regional Australians. It is a disgrace and all members of the National Party should be ashamed for thinking that, by accepting the amendments that the government has sold them, they are doing anything other than selling out our regional communities. In a country where we have such great thinkers, speakers and ideas, the Howard government is asking us to support a bill that will limit the ability of people to have those ideas disseminated and expressed. I oppose this bill and encourage other members of this place to do the same.

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