Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

That certainly was a colourful contribution to the debate, plus some sort of insinuation of plans beyond the Labor Party perhaps. The past few weeks have seen much activity by the National Party to win concessions on the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Digital Television) Bill 2006 and the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2006. I commend the member for Hinkler for his commitment to regional broadcasting matters over many years and his driving of whatever amendments have been achieved. However, the cynic in me sees this exercise as a relevance re-establishment program for the National Party to allow them to reclaim some of their lost claim, indeed, to represent the interests of rural Australia—interests that have been betrayed on so many fronts, as the former speaker, the member for Corio, so colourfully portrayed.

The minister’s first effort to try to allow media operators to own as many licences as they liked was never going to get up. It was the ambit claim, if you like. In fact, the two out of three media in one market was the preferred option of the government in earlier manifestations of this legislation. So there was nothing new in this outcome—these bills—except the urgency to restore some relevance to the Nationals.

Let me begin with the foreign ownership provisions of the legislation. Item 4 of schedule 2 repeals division 4 of part 5 of the current legislation, which limits foreign ownership of Australian media. Under existing laws, no one foreign person can hold a controlling share in a commercial television licence, and two or more foreign persons must not have company interests in a commercial television broadcasting licence exceeding 20 per cent. The removal of this legislated limitation and transfer of determination of foreign investment to the Treasurer is completely contrary to the public interest. In all this debate over the media, it must be stressed—as I have done consistently in this place over a decade—that a broadcasting licence is a privilege, not a commercial right, and, at the very least, levels of foreign investment should be enshrined in legislation determined by the parliament, not a minister.

Apart from this, these provisions to remove legislated restrictions on foreign ownership of Australian broadcast media will inevitably have a negative impact on the production and broadcasting of Australian current affairs and ultimately impact on the independence of that very news and current affairs. We already have the situation, before this bill is fully debated, where plans are well underway for PBL to exploit the new legislation. Reports suggest that they are preparing to sell around 60 per cent of the Nine Network, the ACP magazines and Ninemsn to an American private equity group. The rush, indeed, has started before the Governor-General’s signature is on the legislation, let alone the ink being dry.

Could it be that a favourable outcome was sought from some senators through heavy lobbying in recent weeks? That is not a crime yet, as we know, but it would be immoral. It should be illegal if election donations in multiples of up to just short of $10,000 appear on the returns—in fact, they will not appear on the returns if they are under $10,000—if indeed they are simply made at the next election, completely hidden from public gaze. If ever there were a need for a cap on campaign spending by individual candidates—as I moved unsuccessfully during the debate on that bill—it may be because lobbying of this nature underlines the impression and the perception that our democratic processes are available for negotiation by way of promises of donations up to the point where they are not discernible by any other party if they are under the threshold that has been built into legislation in recent times. I think the so-called electoral integrity laws passed by this parliament earlier this year are an indictment on our democratic processes. The perception, if not the reality, of the sorts of processes that can be put in place to achieve crucial votes in crucial situations to benefit the business sector and others in our community is demonstrated by the perception that can be built around circumstances such as these.

The existing cross-media ownership restrictions have guaranteed a separation of editorial and commercial control and diversity of ownership for the past 14 years. They have also, importantly, removed the temptation for the sort of lobbying that could occur—it may not have occurred to this point but it can and will occur—to further allow the concentration of the media ownership in this country. The irony in all of this is that the former one licence per region for television and one AM radio licence prior to the 1990s delivered more local content and hundreds more jobs than does the aggregated, so-called more choice regional media post 1990. The irony is that, under benign local ownership with local management and local loyalties, the former benign monopoly ownership of pre-aggregation days ensured a far richer line-up of local programs than we have seen since or are likely to see in the future.

Aggregation of regional television in 1988 saw the shrinking of local content on the incumbent local station to the bare half-hour news and little else, from a base of news, current affairs, agriculture, children’s programs and many more community service announcements. Aggregation provided more choice, that is true, but more choice of the often mediocre fare on offer from the three networks. So much for choice and diversity. It can be what governments want to spin it to mean. The existing cross-media ownership laws have not guaranteed local content, especially in radio, but they have guaranteed separate control of broadcast and print in each market, and that is the basic foundation on which a government should build localism requirements.

Let me turn to the submission of my former employer Prime Television to the Senate inquiry on this legislation. Supporting the legislation, Prime said:

If the proposed legislation were passed, and Prime was allowed to acquire a radio station in Bunbury (in addition to Prime’s television station that covers the Bunbury area), local radio news for Bunbury could be sourced from Prime’s Bunbury newsroom ...

Herein lies the very weakness of these cross-media relaxations. While Prime’s submission rightly argues that currently the Bunbury radio station gets so-called local news from Queensland based syndication services, the alternative Prime suggests is just as flawed.

It is true that the threat of a national television satellite footprint delivering network programs prompted the regional stations to significantly ramp up their localism after a decade or more of living on network material alone throughout the seventies. The rebirth of localism in regional TV in the eighties, driven by local owners with local loyalties, was an outstanding example of what a local broadcast licence holder can and should do to service the expectations of its market. There were current affairs shows, 30 minutes of local TV news, children’s shows, weekend magazine programs, outside sporting broadcasts and numerous news specials. From memory, at the height of the renaissance of regional television in the eighties, there were something like 120 employees at a complex in Orange. You could currently fit the workforce into a minivan.

Sadly, aggregation led to a severe diminishing of that local content, basically to little more than the five-day-a-week news, yet the government of the day argued that it provided more. More choice in broadcasting, with the issuing of many more licences, delivered less localism, not more, and the hubbing we have seen in recent years. So, if we are to now allow regional ownerships to merge, quite apart from the Clayton’s localism of hubbing, only the professionalism of individual journalists and editors who would stand up to management and refuse to use generic material stands between diversity of opinion and common editorial policy. I know which is likely to win out, with largely absentee owners looking at profits rather than public interest.

The Prime TV example is exactly what will occur. Radio and TV will not only see a crossover of material but also cross-promotion and cross-media sales deals that will offer economies of scale, with radio and TV commercials sold by the same person at the same time and with bulk deals that will make it extremely hard for any solo medium operation in that market. Apart from that, common news will be just that—common. When an advertiser wants a special deal, including editorial coverage, that will inevitably creep into the equation as well. If pressure is applied to drop an embarrassing story, not one outlet but both radio and TV journalists will potentially be compromised.

Prime TV is right when it says in its submission that a wide range of media access is available across regional Australia and is likely to improve with advances in broadband technology, with online publishing, community radio, pay TV, ABC services and the like thrown in. However, free-to-air television, radio and mass circulation daily or biweekly newspapers remain the dominant sources of local news and commercial advertising.

Back in 2003, when we were debating the media ownership bill mark II, when the government did not have the carte blanche of Senate control and was frustrated in passing legislation like this, I quoted Dr Kim Jackson’s work from the Parliamentary Library. With cross-media ownership relaxation provisions exactly the same as those in these new bills, she said then:

The impact of these relaxed cross-media ... owners in places like Bathurst, Orange and Tamworth and major regional centres, which is a forty per cent reduction in minimum possible ownership, diversity of control and possible opinion, further exacerbated by the likely converging of editorial management and content under such reduced ownership.

That is exactly the case now. Whether it is one of all three media initially proposed by the minister, and opposed so heroically by The Nationals, or whether it is two of three, now the outcome will be basically the same.

Orange, with six commercial operators, two radio owners, three television operators and a newspaper, will now be able to have, say, Rural Press also controlling a TV licence, another TV licensee taking over the second radio operation, and the remaining TV owner taking control of the second radio licence. That is the potential. Only the vague four voices rule in this legislation stands in the way of a contraction to three players in the Orange market. How long will it be before the clamour for three, not four, voices is heard from regional markets, because the third and fourth solo voices in such a market will be at a severe disadvantage in competing against the big two? From six to four, and likely three, the strongest morning radio station and newspaper will be powerful players in that market, while potentially two other mergers allow for common news production, common advertising schemes and so on—concentration of control, reduction of diversity. The same applies to two out of three in city markets.

Former Senator Brian Harradine introduced the famous Packer-Murdoch amendments to similar legislation in 2003 which effectively stymied the bill. It flushed out the intent of those bills which was to hand more free media control to the media moguls. Harradine moved an amendment to preclude newspaper owners from operating a television station in the same capital city. This legislation, of course, will allow that. Senator Harradine rightly said that his key amendment was ‘to protect against media proprietors having undue influence’, particularly in a city, by owning both a TV licence and a newspaper in that city. Hey, here we are, back exactly at that point.

I said back in December 2003 that the lessons of the sixties, seventies and eighties are clear. Those lessons were learnt through the common ownership of TV, radio and newspaper by the Packer, Fairfax and Murdoch media empires, where I had personal experience with hands-on influence on the content of news bulletins, cross-media newsrooms and common editorial policies when it suited the political imperatives or, indeed, the commercial imperatives of the owners.

We can look back to things like the famous soap inquiry of the seventies. Also, throughout the 1972 election campaign, there was a tightly constructed editorial process put in place to coordinate the positions of three media in markets right around Australia, deliberately designed to achieve a political outcome. This could impact on anyone and any government at any time if we have concentrated media determining that that is the position they will take at any particular time.

We have in recent years also seen the moves—thankfully dumped after public outcry—by 2UE and 2GB for colocated radio news services servicing competing radio stations. That was suggested under existing legislation. Nothing in this legislation suggests that similar moves as those which occur in radio news syndication for regional radio will not simply flourish. It is absolutely essential to require editorial separation for commonly owned media operations in a licence area in order to maintain editorial and news separation. I notice the Macquarie Regional Radio Works network complaining about the onerous nature of these legislative changes. It will cost them money to establish independent news services. So it should! Perhaps some of the petty cash allowances of its super funded executives could pay for it.

The 12½ minutes of local news daily per station and the 4½ hours of live and local broadcasting for radio seem impressive. But I know how such provisions can be circumvented. Generic stories on general topics such as sunscreen application in summer, as important as it is, can be easily syndicated across many stations. There are numerous examples of the sort of material that can be said to be local when in fact it is churned out of a news sausage factory somewhere in a market and delivered to the complying editor at the point of use.

However, the minimum content requirements for local radio are at least an advance on what we have had to date, with hubbing of programming far too popular an option for network operators more concerned with profit than the public; more concerned with loot than local. In the absence of local owners living and thinking locally, there will always be a commercial imperative to cut costs to a bare minimum. The maximising of technology and hubbing of programs, commercial production and news production, are the way things will go in the absence of specific regulation.

If new section 43A requires licensing conditions on TV stations to ensure a minimum level of material of local significance then surely the new division 5C, which requires minimum local news, information, community and emergency announcements in addition to news and weather, is nothing onerous for radio operators. In fact, it should be essential in any market claiming to represent and broadcast to its local audience. However, section 43A provides only that ACMA determines the specifics of the local content licence conditions for television broadcasters. Such conditions should be included for both radio and television in legislation, and thus be subject to regulation and amendment under the Broadcasting Services Act.

Let me quote briefly the words of Postmaster-General Mr Davidson in 1956, exactly 50 years ago, as television began in this country. He said:

Television stations—

and you could put in local radio and city radio as well—

are in a position to exercise a constant and cumulative effect on public taste and standards of conduct, because of the influence they can bring to bear on the community, the business interests of licensees must at all times be subordinated to the overriding principle that the possession of a licence is a ... public trust for the benefit of all members of our society.

I would suggest that this legislation is completely contrary to the tenor of those remarks of Mr Davidson 50 years ago. He, a member of a conservative government, would have been appalled at this move to deliver up to media owners the control of the media that, to this point, has been well served by the cross-media ownership restrictions.

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