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

Our democracy depends on a free press as much as it depends on free elections. The work that journalists do, the work that newspapers, broadcasters and website bloggers do, is as important as the work that we do here as legislators. A key test of a democracy is the extent to which the press is free—not free from anything but free from government. Around the world the greatest threat to press freedom is governments—governments that seek to have the press tell them what they want. We know that every government feels it is being treated unfairly by the press, and I have to say that any government that read the press every day and was satisfied with the reports would have a press that was not doing its job. The job of the press is to make governments and the powerful uncomfortable. The job of journalists is to uncover wrongdoing. The job of journalists is to hold governments to account. I will come to some great examples of that in a moment.

When you have a government in a country such as ours which has never sought to regulate newspapers—to interfere with the content of newspapers in peacetime—take that step for government oversight of the content and the standards of newspapers, that is an incredibly big step. That is a momentous moment. It begins with a walk with the Public Interest Media Advocate and could end with a press that is virtually controlled by the government. Keeping government's hands off the press is fundamental; it is vital to our democracy. So, you would think that if a government, a competent government—were we to have one—were even to consider a step such as this, it would do so with the greatest of care, with the greatest consultation, with lengthy hearings, with extensive debate.

But, oh, no. These so-called media reforms are really a jumble of measures, each of which has virtually nothing to do with the others—some relate to licence fees, some to content, some to newspapers. They are a complete dog's breakfast of measures which have no coherent unity among them. They have been flung into the parliament by Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, and the only question that his action has settled is this: he is without question the least competent minister in this most shambolic and inept of governments. Yesterday, when the Leader of the House was sitting opposite me, I asked him to nominate a more incompetent minister and he was unable to nominate one. So that title is without question.

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