Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on a bill, the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Media Reform) Bill 2016, that relates to an issue that for many years I had a vested interest in as a journalist. I followed closely the pressures applied to government by media proprietors whenever media reforms were on the agenda. While we have indicated our support for schedule 1, the removal of the 75 per cent reach rule in this legislation—which was, in fact, our proposal originally—I have concerns about schedule 2, the repeal of the two-out-of-three rule.

There is no doubt that getting the regulatory settings right in the broadcast and media sector is a challenge. The disruption that is occurring in the sector is significant. As a former news journalist, I worry about the consequences for reporters in a market that is increasingly fragmented and where jobs are contracting. Any reform needs to be done based on the principles of: independence in media and higher standards; diversity in content, including in ownership of companies and industry structure; making sure there are regional services and regional content; and supporting jobs and local Australian content. This government has not bothered to do the work in four years to come up with any substantial reform, and that is why we have this bill before us.

Why do I not want to see the two-out-of-three rule dumped? The two-out-of-three rule restricts a single owner from controlling a free-to-air TV station, newspapers and radio stations in the one market. You can have two of them but not three. Firstly, a history lesson: this rule came in in 1986 with the first serious media reforms since television was invented. Prime Minister Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating introduced this rule to ensure that no single player dominated a market. As Keating so beautifully said, 'You can be the queen of the screen or the prince of print, but not both.'

I was a journalist back then, working in the Canberra press gallery for commercial radio 2UE. That period was a time of big change. Kerry Packer bought 2UE and 3AK from the Lamb family. So I found myself joining the Packer stable. Only a year later Packer sold to Alan Bond for a record price. So not only did I report extensively on those reforms but I was caught up in the massive changes that occurred. Now, as then, the aims were to ensure that there was viability and, we believe, diversity.

While the reach rule has been made obsolete by the advances of technology—which means you can stream things from a whole lot of devices and the lines between platforms are blurry—as far as the two-out-of-three rule goes there are still good reasons to think more carefully about the implications of abolishing it. And I do not believe the government has thought very carefully. Seven West Media's submission to the Senate inquiry into this bill is particularly telling. They said:

No clear consumer benefit from merger and acquisition activity that may follow removal of the 75% reach rule or the 2 out of 3 rule has been articulated. And previous M&A activity from the 2006 changes did not deliver more or better services to Australians. In fact, these changes will arguably see greater consolidation, less diversity and less local content than ever before.

This is a very telling statement from a key media player.

We do need to ensure there is a diversity of Australian voices. Traditional media still dominates as a source of news information, and the concentration of ownership is intensifying. Don't believe me; listen to former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, whose words seem to be quoted more often on our side of the chamber these days than on the other side. He said:

In my term, there were seven print proprietors. Now there is one and a bit. We have the most concentrated media in any democratic country, anywhere in the entire damn world. That is dangerous.

These days, seven of the 10 top news websites are owned by the traditional media companies. You do not just read the Daily Telegraph, you click on news.com, you stream news clips from Facebook or Twitter. The distribution is different, but the content is the same. It is terrific to see alternative voices like Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, but the only new entrants to the list of top-10 news websites outside the traditional media are Britain's Daily Mail and the Australian version of the British-owned Guardian. And you have to feel for New Zealand, where it looks likely that the two Australian-based groups that own the two main New Zealand titles, Fairfax and APN News and Media, will actually join forces. They will be even more restricted to a narrower number of voices.

As a former journo, the real problem for me with restrictive ownership is that you cannot afford to take chances. The fewer owners, the fewer people you can annoy as a journalist. I experienced this concern myself when owned by Packer. In fact, I recall that my radio station had only recently been taken over by him when Lionel Bowen, the formal Attorney-General, dismissed allegations made to the Costigan royal commission against Kerry Packer, who had been identified with the codename 'the Goanna'. This was by no means a difficult story to report. It would have been much harder if the Attorney-General had found the other way, but as a young, green journalist in my early 20s I had to report this. You tread really carefully when it is your boss. And it was my boss I was writing about. I remember being more cautious than I would have been reporting on just about any other individual. I can only imagine how much more risk adverse you are in your reporting if you know that there is no-one else to employ you.

But journalists are there to break stories. They are there to report things that someone does not want said. That is their vital role in our democracy. The Democrats might have coined the phrase 'keep the bastards honest', but the media has been doing that from day 1. A well-functioning democracy has, at its heart, an informed constituency. It is a journalist's job to find and verify information in the public interest, rather than just rip and read from media releases. Sure, the technology means that citizen journalists can be local news gatherers. But there is none of the rigour of a trained reporter, and it can lead to huge gaps in subject coverage and be really hit and miss.

I remind myself that these proposed changes are happening at a time when there are ongoing cuts to journalists at every major media outlet. It is estimated that around 700 journalist jobs were lost in Australia during the GFC between 2008 and 2009. This was followed by the loss of another 2,500 journalism jobs between 2012 and 2015. Since then, hundreds more jobs have gone. Earlier this year Fairfax cut about 100 full-time equivalent positions in its metropolitan daily news and business divisions in Sydney and Melbourne. A year ago it was 55 from News Corp. Fairfax's regional publishing business, ACM, is moving ahead with a common newspaper template, with opportunities for content sharing. Journalists spared from the sackings are required to do more with less, including taking photographs, subediting their stories and uploading them online. All major media companies, including Fairfax, News Corp, West Australian Newspapers, AAP and major regional publishers, have slashed their workforces. No community has been spared.

A survey by New Beats found the average age of journalists made redundant—and most job losses have come through voluntary redundancies, which appeal to more senior journalists who have worked with an employer for many years—was just over 49 years. They had worked in journalism for an average of 26 years each. So that is a lot of journalism experience walking out the door. There are implications of these changes: they undermine the diversity of local reporting and its accuracy, and they narrow the voice and threaten democracy. I would have to agree with my union—yes, I am a proud member of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance. The MEAA does not support the removal of the cross-media control rule, because it sees the bill's dominant focus as relieving regulatory burden on media entities rather than benefiting media diversity.

It is not just journalists that I worry about; I worry about local businesses. I noticed in an editorial in The Australian that the removal of the cross-media ownership law may be the way that local content offerings can be improved for regional areas, because a proprietor who owns television, radio, print and internet assets in an area could 'deepen and expand local content and news.' But my concern about this is that if you are a small business operating in a regional area, if you are a big business in a regional area, if you are a local government agency operating in that region or if you are a local community group operating in that region, again, you have only one organisation with which to build a relationship. If they take a dislike to your business, then there is no other medium in which to get the facts out. Right now, if you get bad press, you can turn to another medium whether it is the local commercial radio station or TV station and present a different side of the story. But if you have the one owner—the one organisation, the one editorial controller—there is no second bite and no way to correct misinformation or to provide extra information to a commercial audience.

The decline of journalist jobs in this commercial media sector, whether it is print or broadcast, places even greater importance on Australian taxpayers' continued support for strong public service journalism. Therefore, the other issue for me is that this coincides with attacks on the national broadcasters: the ABC and SBS. These organisations provide essential diversity—different voices in a whole range of ways—and yet they too are being undermined. The ABC plays a unique role delivering local Australian news across the nation's states but it too has suffered recent substantial funding cuts and journalism job losses.

In 2014, a $200 million federal government cut reduced jobs and editorial output in state newsrooms, regional newsrooms and international bureaus. As a result, over the last decade, audiences have witnessed the loss of much specialised TV, radio and digital content, both at home and in our Asian region. Of course, the cuts have not stopped since then across the ABC, with a whole range of editorial roles simply disappearing.

The ABC said that more than $6 million would be axed from the ABC news division annually over the next three years following the 2016 budget, along with millions of dollars worth of cuts to the ABC's online and mobile capacity. There was the axing of the ABC Fact Check unit and other editorial redundancies at the ABC in the lead up to the last federal election. Journalists from the Fact Check unit and national reporting team were sacked, resulting in a loss of quality journalism and talented journalists, with impact on newsrooms around the country. The MEAA warns that this will place news services at the ABC under extreme pressure. Even after these cuts, the Director of ABC News, Gaven Morris, has warned of more challenges to continue delivering original and investigative journalism, and local and regional news gathering.

Like some ABC employees, I am not the first to be concerned that the changes constitute 'a serious breach of the ABC Charter and a disservice to the Australian audiences that the ABC is funded to serve'. In my electorate, the Blue Mountains Friends of the ABC, one of the most active groups of that volunteer organisation, recently held their AGM and these issues were top of mind, not least the latest ABC Radio National cuts.

As we consider changes to the way media companies operate, we cannot ignore that change is occurring. I have found it interesting to hear the other side say how unnecessary the two-out-of-three rule is. In the same breath they have trumpeted the need for diversity yet the only diversity I can see coming is more US programs and news dumped on us.

In the broadcast media sphere, US owned Netflix announced it will undercut local competitors—Presto, jointly owned by Foxtel and Seven West Media; and Stan, a Fairfax and Nine Entertainment Co. partnership—to stream video content directly to Australia. The potential dominance of foreign owned media is concerning given that we once had specific laws to guard against it so that we could protect Australian news content and its democratic function and hear Australian voices. Isn't it strange that in 2016, when local newspapers are experiencing financial pressures, there is little examination about what these offshore arrivals mean for Australian audiences and Australian news content, particularly in terms of local news?

We are seeing here legislation that is simply attempting to tinker with the rules rather than really respond to the seismic shifts that are happening. On this side, we are committed to genuine reform. Labor wants to see a comprehensive inquiry into ownership, concentration and competition in the Australian media market, because there has not been one in nearly 20 years. It needs to be done independently.

Whatever changes this parliament agrees to will have wide-ranging implications for decades to come, not just for my children but for my grandchildren. You have to wonder why the government wants to rush this through, particularly given it was not even one of their priorities at the last election. You would think that a former communications minister, now the Prime Minister, would take this stuff seriously. Although, when we see what he has done the NBN, perhaps it is absolutely no surprise at all.

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