Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

The motion to establish this committee, which we are acceding to, has to be put in the context of this total mess of media reforms—or changes, the so-called reforms—which, as I have said, have been ill thought out and are being rushed through the parliament. The parliament is having a gun held to its head and is being told, 'You have four days to talk about these provisions and then you have to pass them or nothing will happen.' That is the threat that Senator Conroy has made. It holds the parliament and the people all of us here represent, both in the House and in the Senate, in contempt.

The reality is that if a senator or indeed any other member is unhappy with how they are portrayed on the front page of the Daily Telegraph they can always bring a defamation action and sue for libel. They have every recourse of the law. It is not the job of the government or any government bureaucrat to regulate the content of newspapers. There is a degree of regulation of broadcasters because they are using public licensed spectrum and that has been part of our media landscape for all of our lives. But the newspapers, whether they are on paper or online, have always been free of government regulation. Committed as we are to freedom of speech, we say that they should remain free. Those voices should remain free. We asked the Prime Minister in question time, 'What is the mischief, what is the problem you are seeking to address? Give us one example of some outrage that you think this new intervention is going to address,' and she could not nominate one—not one. So what is this? It is just the outpourings of a government that is obsessed with regulation and is determined to inflict some pain on News Limited because it has been unkind to the government—so they say. We would say that it has been thoroughly just in giving them the shellacking they deserve. We all have a view on that. But it is not the government's job to regulate newspapers and it should not be.

As far as concentration of ownership is concerned, I repeat what I said earlier, and it is an undoubted fact: there is more diversity in the media today than there has ever been in my lifetime. That is for sure: there is much more diversity today than there ever has been. The Guardian is about to launch an Australian online newspaper, a completely new paper. When did that last happen? That is an example of the liberating way in which the internet, this super platform, opens up so many opportunities for so many different voices. And of course that does not even begin to touch upon the impact of social media.

When Senator Conroy said that the threshold for media outlets to be subject to this regulation was circulation, readership or viewership of 50,000 I thought they were having a go at the member for Griffith, because he has more than a million followers on his Twitter account. But apparently they have to be paid subscribers, so the member for Griffith is not going to be subject to it.

Yes, we are committed to freedom and diversity. Technology and competition in the market have delivered diversity we have never known before in our lives and freedom of the press is as fundamentally important to our democracy as anything we do in this chamber or in the other place. The government is putting it under threat and it is asking the parliament to make decisions on these momentous matters in four sitting days. It is holding the people in contempt and we will not be a part of it.

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