Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

I can say: every single Labor Party member loves to get a lecture from the foreman from Frenchs Forest on what is in the interests of people in regional Australia! He would not know what regional Australia was if he went there in his Mercedes-Benz.

Frankly, the government has had an opportunity today to prove beyond doubt that they are neither lazy nor indolent. The shadow minister has put a reasonable proposition before them. Let me go through the proposition that we have put before the House today, because there are four propositions which the government puts forward as their proposals for media reform in this country. The first is that we repeal the 75 per cent reach rule, the second is that we repeal the two-out-of-three rule, the third is that we insert within the legislation beefed-up local content provisions and the fourth is that we amend the licence fees arrangement. We are willing to give the government three out of four of these proposals. We are willing to give the government time. They can go and convene a meeting with George Christensen if they really need to work out what their policy proposition is on this! We are willing to give the government time, but they have it within their gift to make the changes necessary to get some real reform through. And we could do it before the end of the week.

If we look at the objections to accepting the amendment put forward by the shadow minister, they fall into two or three categories. The first is that this is all interlinked. It is like some delicate house of cards—if you remove one of the proposals from the package everything else is going to fall to bits. Nothing could be further from the truth.

See this speech in context