Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries) Share this | Hansard source

The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television) Bill 2006 and the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2006 represent one of the most disgraceful cave-ins of any Australian government in recent memory to the commercial interests of media barons in this country. Under the guise of media reform the Howard government, in pandering to those interests, has struck an enormous blow to media diversity in this country, and to Australian democracy in the process. As this hypocritical government lectures the rest of the world, particularly countries in the Middle East, on the virtues of democracy, it brings into this parliament a piece of legislation that seeks to diminish democracy in this country.

There is nothing more nauseating, in a political sense, than this Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs ranting about  our noble purpose in Iraq and their quest to bring democracy to the Middle East region, and then seeing this sort of legislation being brought into the Australian parliament. What is even more nauseating is that they are prepared to send Australians to die in that conflict on the basis of a political lie, while they undermine democratic practice in this country.

Diversity is the lifeblood of our democracy. Because we live in a stable, advanced democracy we ought to have put before us legislation that enhances and strengthens that diversity, not legislation that concentrates more media power in fewer hands. As my colleague the member for Perth so eloquently put in his speech in the second reading debate:

The government’s media ownership bill will reduce media diversity, reduce competition and reduce consumer choice.

Labor introduced the cross-media laws in this country to protect diversity in the Australian media. It is a policy that has stood the test of time in the face of a virtual revolution in mass communications in this country and around the globe. It is a policy that major democracies around the world—and I include the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France and a whole list of others—have in place to achieve and maintain media diversity in their own countries. They do it simply because there is a fundamental belief that media diversity is one of the cornerstones of a working democracy.

This is not the first time the Prime Minister has grovelled before the media magnates of this country by putting up legislation that enhances their interests at the expense of the Australian people and their great democracy. It is the third time in a decade that this Prime Minister has attempted to attack media diversity and pander to sectional commercial interests in the media. I think it is reasonable to ask whether the Prime Minister and members of the government have any real commitment to an Australian democracy at all.

It has always historically been the case that the greatest assault on democratic practice in this country has come from the Liberal and National parties, and this media ownership bill is but one example of that assault on democratic values, processes and institutions in this country. Witness the abandonment of any standards of ministerial conduct as members of the government lie their way through issue after issue: children overboard and Iraq are just two. Witness the concentration of political power by the executive over the processes of this parliament and the massive assault on parliamentary scrutiny as the government reduces the capacity of the Senate committee system to provide an appropriate check and balance to the abuse of power by members of the executive. Witness the assault of this government on the right of its citizens to freedom of information. Witness the stripping away of the fundamental rights of citizens of this country all in the name of the war on terror. Witness the attack by this government on individual judges and the independence of the judiciary. Witness the politicisation of our great Public Service. Witness the relative ease by which ministers have been able to insulate themselves from political accountability in issues such as the wheat for weapons AWB scandal. It is not a pleasant political landscape as far as our great Australian democracy is concerned. And now we have a remaining assault on the integrity of the regulatory regime governing the concentration of power in the fourth estate.

Given the contentious nature of this legislation, I am absolutely appalled that it is being rammed through the parliament with limited debate and scrutiny. This whole area of public policy is a complex one. For the citizens of this country who are not familiar with its complexity and the potential political impacts on their democracy, finding their way through these complexities to a reasonable understanding of the legislation’s import is very difficult indeed. For members of parliament it can be daunting and difficult also. It is through the democratic process of parliamentary debate and public discussion that information is obtained, views are challenged, understandings developed and appropriate positions formed by people in this parliament and outside of it.

For the public record, the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts was only given three weeks to conduct its inquiry into these bills. The general public, I am informed by my Senate colleagues, only had one week to make submissions. The committee had only two days of public hearings to consider these bills and the time of the opposition to question witnesses was severely limited. It is an extraordinary perversion of democratic practice on such an important matter of public policy, but when you examine this bill you can understand why.

Let us deal first with the issue of cross-media ownership. Under the current legislative provisions, companies can only control a newspaper or a radio licence or a commercial TV licence in any one market. The government’s legislation will now permit mergers between commercial TV, commercial radio and associated newspaper businesses operating in the same market. Distilled down to its basics, this is a bill that allows further concentration of media ownership in this country. Under the government’s five-four rule, it is allowing greater concentration of media assets and power, particularly in regional areas.

There is a grave doubt that the ACCC will have the necessary power to prevent mergers that it might consider to be anticompetitive, and that view is based on recent Federal Court judgements that limit the potential of the ACCC to exercise its powers around mergers it considers to be anticompetitive. In addition, the Productivity Commission in its broadcasting report had this to say:

It is clear that the Trade Practices Act as it stands would be unable to prevent many cross-media mergers or acquisitions which may reduce diversity. It is also clear that the adoption by the ACCC of a broader definition of the media market would not adequately address the social dimensions of the policy problem, and would be open to legal challenge.

I would not have thought that the Productivity Commission was one of the most left wing of organisations in this society, but we in this place do rely from time to time on the views expressed by a commission that stands at arms-length from the government and opposition of the day and conducts its inquiries into these matters in what it perceives under its charter to be the public interest. Part of that public interest, as far as the Productivity Commission’s charter is concerned, is to engender a competitive regime in the commercial marketplace. Here is the Productivity Commission sounding a very significant warning that the Trade Practices Act may not be able to prevent the sorts of mergers and acquisitions that will see enormous concentration of media power in this country.

The impacts of this legislation will be far reaching on journalists, on local content programming, on the diversity of the news and information available to the public, on the diversity of regional media and on the health of our democracy. In my own electorate, the great regional centre of Geelong exists in the media footprint of Melbourne. In contrast to Ballarat and Bendigo, where at least there is an electronic TV outlet that is able to focus on local news and events, we do not have that particular facility in Geelong at all. Even recently we had an attempt by certain media interests to take over some independent media outlets that were providing an alternative source of information and news to the people of Geelong.

Whilst we might have some degree of diversity in our radio programming, I think it is fair to say that Geelong is not particularly well serviced by a diverse media market, in a local sense. One of my concerns is that this particular legislation will allow an even greater concentration of media ownership in the Geelong region, down from six to four. That is not in the healthy interests of the local community in Geelong. It is certainly not in the interests of good democratic practice in my electorate and locality.

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