Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Fraser for his contribution. I particularly like the idea that there should be more Tingle and less Bingle. It is true that the number of devoted readers to considered journalism has declined over recent years. We work in a parliament that has seen that. We have lost—I was almost tempted to say 'good friends'—good journalists. They have departed the building too often over the last five years as newspaper readership has declined. It is a rapidly changing digital world, and this has had implications.

The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (News Media Diversity) Bill is intended to protect the diversity of news in the media. As the member for Fraser states, we are one of the least diverse OECD nations in the world when it comes to news media. Basically, north of 80 per cent of the news is provided by two entities. If you take out the charter organisations—the ABC and the SBS, that have their own set of regulations, prescribed processes and complaints handling processes and the like—it is easy to put up an argument that the people of Australia are not being as well served as they could be, because there is not as much diversity as there should be in our news organisations.

I am going to read out a few newspaper headlines just to get the flavour of our newspapers: 'Kids make nutritious snacks,' 'Juvenile court to try shooting defendant,' 'Prostitutes appeal to pope,' 'Plane too close to ground, crash probe told,' 'Drunk gets nine months in violin case,' 'Something went wrong in jet crash, expert says,' 'Miners refuse to work after death,' and 'War dims hope for peace'. These are hopefully apocryphal but they give an idea about how we approach the media generally. Sometimes they do not get it right. I think some of those internet collections of newspaper headlines that people keep in their drawers are quite amusing. Perhaps the sub-editor who let them through had a strong sense of humour.

But the reality is that news entities have changed significantly since 1901 in terms of how they approach journalism and how they approach the product that they have to sell. The reality is that the declining sales of newspapers mean that the income streams for many news organisations has collapsed. They used to receive income for the weekend career ad or the ad for the sale of a car or the like; now many people are selling those products on the internet.

Whilst news organisations have stepped into the internet—some more efficiently than others—the rule of thumb seems to be that for every dollar that they would have got for a newspaper ad they are now getting 10c for an internet ad—and some say it is even less than that. That is a collapse in income for these organisations which has meant a rationalisation of employees. There have been many dismissals, redundancies and shrinkage over the last five to 10 years.

There are now cities in the United States larger than Brisbane that do not have a print newspaper. That is the wave that is coming to Australia. That is why it is so much more crucial that we have as much diversity as possible—and that is what this legislation is about. There have been colossal changes to the public's freedom of information in this country.

The digital age is upon us, and it is obviously embraced by this government. We have invested in schools to make sure that kids have computers. We have invested in the national broadband network to make sure that electorates like Braddon have broadband rolled out and so that it goes all around Australia. We understand the digital age. There is no point trying to hold back this tide. In fact, it is a greater opportunity for this nation in terms of boosting productivity and engaging with our Asian region, where we have great opportunities to sell services, products, knowledge and the like. It will ensure that my great grandchildren have jobs in the future.

But the digital age does bring challenges. Freedom of speech is very important. We have heard a lot of chest-thumping about it over the last few days both from the owners of newspapers and from those who wish to cosy up to the owners of news organisations. Freedom of speech is predicated on a free society, and to limit it would contradict self-government and limit our rights. This is not what this legislation is about.

We understand that diversity is extremely valuable and is something that is worth protecting, because if too much information is concentrated into one hand there is the opportunity for exploitation and for people to misrepresent things—and that does happen.

We have not seen a reasoned debate about these light-touch changes. The member for Corio was on the doors the other day and, for the first time since I have known him, he was unable to answer a question when asked about Senator Conroy being on the front page of the Daily Telegraph. That shows that the news organisations pitched it wrongly; it was a complete over-reaction.

The reality is that Australia has seen a decline in the number of news organisations serving our capital cities, and that has not necessarily been in the best interests of the Australian public. I have previously said, at the ALP National Conference, in my role as an author and working in the publishing industry, that we need to have Australian voices; we do not need to sell just one product that is made somewhere in Los Angeles. That applies to Australian news stories as well. We need Australian stories told with Australian accents so that the people of Australia, who come from everywhere—apart from our Indigenous Australians—understand what makes Australia great. One of the main things is that we tell Australian stories—not one Australian story but a diverse range of views. The good thing about the digital age is that it brings those voices to the forefront. You do not need a major printing press now; you just need the National Broadband Network, a good brain, a couple of computers and a few journalists and you can put an alternative voice out there. It is not just a case of whatever comes out of Rupert Murdoch's boardroom; now there are a range of views being put forward.

I particularly commend the work of the ABC and SBS. Quite a lot of journalists have been phoning me today. There must be something happening out there. I am not quite sure what they want to talk to me about, but I have said to every journalist that I am happy to talk about any government policy, especially regarding approaches to media regulation. There are different points of view. ABC journalists and SBS journalists have a charter. They have some strong guides as to what they can do and what their professional standards are, even regarding proper mentoring and proper treatment of people who provide information. I would suggest those standards are pretty dominant in Canberra, in the press gallery, but I am not sure that it is necessarily the case throughout Australia.

The Australian government must do the right thing by the nation through this legislation in promoting media diversity because things have changed so rapidly since the last time a government—I think it was the Howard government—made legislation regarding diversity. The digital age has created so many more voices. Consumers out there have choice—I do understand that—but it is quality choice and every consumer will still need a quality voice. They will still need a voice that can be trusted.

I certainly think that all 150 MPs in this House would have had their offices respond to emails with misinformation on a range of topics. It goes to show how quickly some information can fly around. The grapevine is so much faster than it used to be. Information can now be distributed through a variety of groups. When it comes from someone that you trust, you might like to trust the information that is in the email. I have seen it in my office time and time again: a half-truth or misinformation, or even a lie, is sent out around the email networks and we spend our time responding to it. That is why it is important that we have a strong news media; that it is why it is important that we have standards that make sure that facts are checked, information is verified and both sides of a story are given where appropriate, rather than having someone chase a rumour and report how someone responded to that half-truth.

There has been progression in Australia on how we approach the free expression of ideas. The fourth estate has always played a significant role. If we look at progression by the civil rights movement, the gay liberation movement and the women's movement we can see how those ideas are approached by the establishment, with the fourth estate being a representative of the establishment. It is interesting to see how they have treated the progression of ideas. I see it time and time again with an idea. That is what the Labor Party is: we are the progressive party; we tend to advocate for appropriate change. Sometimes it is difficult to pitch it exactly right, but you know that we do not rest on our laurels and do nothing. We are the party that tries to make sure that newspapers and journalists give the right analysis on a bit of information.

Editors have a tough job. I understand that. Adlai Stevenson famously said that an editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff. That is not necessarily an approach that I would agree with. I certainly try not to let my happiness connect to the front page of the Australian, even though I am a regular reader, or the Courier Mail. If we danced to their shadows, who knows where we would end up.

I will finish with a quote from a famous author: Leo Tolstoy. He made a comment about journalism and newspapers. He said:

All newspaper and journalistic activity is an intellectual brothel from which there is no retreat.

In light of some of the reporting we have seen over the last few weeks, I will leave the last word to Mr Tolstoy. That is an appropriate comment on this piece of legislation.

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