Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

( I second the motion. The Communications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation and Other Measures) Bill 2019 is one of the last flames from the deregulation bonfire initiated by Tony Abbott many years ago. The government first announced this bill in December 2015 and declared its commitment to remove outdated regulation. So we find ourselves here, four years later, debating what is effectively the same legislation in the House of Representatives for the third time.

Labor supports sensible amendments to remove unnecessary administrative requirements imposed on industry to repeal redundant legislation and spent acts. While this bill does have some utility, its value should not be overstated. This is a straightforward bill that forms part of a rudimentary regulatory housekeeping exercise. These amendments do nothing meaningful to reduce the cost of regulation on the broadcasting or telecommunications sectors. While earlier deregulation bills delivered more significant cost savings for industry, this bill is by and large inconsequential in terms of the true reform task facing the sector. Shrinking news outlets outside the major cities; a growing concentration of media ownership; digital platforms fracturing audiences and soaking up traditional revenue streams; and social media giants that facilitate disinformation—these are the real challenges facing the media landscape in Australia.

It is clear that Australian media is facing a crisis, and nowhere is media more threatened than in the regions. Earlier this year we saw the closure of several WIN regional newsrooms and the end of production of five local news bulletins. Last year WIN TV moved its Tasmanian news bulletin to its Wollongong offices, cutting staff from 18 to nine. At the time, it was explained that the decision was based on the commercial viability of funding news in those areas. We know that there are several factors that mean there has been a reduction in demand for local news bulletins in regional areas. The advent of digital media caused audiences to fragment. That meant the importance of an audience for regular broadcast news bulletins declined, reducing the amount that could be charged for advertising.

The industry had not fully adjusted to those changes when social media came along and it saw a lot of the remaining advertising revenue diverted from news media to the new platform. Between January 2013 and June 2017 the total advertising market in Australia grew by 11 per cent. But that growth was almost entirely away from traditional media. Digital advertising grew by 87 per cent in this period. That's extraordinary. At the same time, advertising revenue in television fell five per cent and print advertising revenue saw a 46 per cent drop from $373 million in 2013 to $202 million in 2017. Yet it is TV and print that continue to employ most journalists in this country.

Additionally, changing consumption habits and increased competition from digital content providers that don't face the same regulatory conditions challenged traditional media further. A recent inquiry into digital platforms by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that virtually no media regulation applies to digital platforms. This creates regulatory disparity between some digital platforms and some more heavily regulated media businesses that perform comparable functions and, arguably, a much more important social and community function. The disparity exists due to the failure of current regulatory frameworks to keep pace with changes in technology, consumer preferences and the way in which media businesses now operate. Over six years, this government has been asleep at the wheel. Digitisation and the increase in online creation and aggregation of news and media content highlight the inconsistencies in the current sector-specific approach to media regulation in Australia that gives rise to an uneven playing field between digital platforms and some news media businesses.

In its report, the ACCC recommended that media regulatory frameworks be updated to ensure that comparable functions are effectively and consistently regulated. Program supply and infrastructure costs also mean that regional media needs to constantly review its operating model to ensure the ongoing viability of business. The crisis in the media's business models is being felt most acutely at the local news level. The availability of local news in the regions of Australia has sharply declined over the past five years and is likely to decline further. The decline is across the board, though it's more marked in the outer suburbs of metropolitan regions and in rural and regional areas.

For many Australians, sadly, it's now easier to find out what is happening in the White House than what's happening at the local school, or why the potholes in the road haven't been fixed. Data collected by the ACCC shows that between 2008 and 2018, 106 local and regional newspaper titles closed across Australia, representing a net 15 per cent decrease in the number of these publications in just 10 years—and I know newspapers are not necessarily the remit of this place, but if you wouldn't mind indulging me, Deputy Speaker! These closures have left 21 local government areas without coverage from a single local newspaper.

In December 2018, the former Fairfax regional newspaper network became part of the Nine media company, and as part of that deal for the SMH and The Age, the regional paper network was sold to Anthony Catalano and the Thorney Investment Group. This includes 160-plus regional titles and around 130 community based websites and agricultural publications. Two of them are in Tasmania, The Examiner and The Advocate, and we're hopeful that under the new ownership they will continue. As the Australian Communications and Media Authority observed in its 2017 Local content in regional Australiareport, the profitability of regional broadcasting is declining under the same pressures that are affecting media across the Western world, fragmenting audiences and the shift of advertising revenue to social media platforms.

Local journalism matters and local news is vital to communities, particularly rural and regional communities. Without it, institutions become less accountable—frankly, so do politicians—citizens are disempowered and power transfers to those with the ability and motivation to manipulate public opinion. This month marks 30 years of the Fremantle Heraldwhere I got my start as that paper's first cadet—a fearless, independent and locally owned paper that has survived recessions, disgraceful anticompetitive behaviour by its corporate rival and very touchy councils that withdraw advertising over unflattering stories. If more papers were like the Fremantle Herald, locally owned and locally operated, born in and of their communities, then the Australian local media landscape would be a much healthier place. Indeed, in 2016, a study by the Pew Research Centre found that in the United States civic engagement is strongly tied to local news habits. Those with stronger news interest consumption and better attitudes towards the news media, were considerably more likely to feel attached to their communities and to always vote in local elections.

In my own electorate of Lyons, there are at least 15 community papers and newsletters. We don't have the weekly letterbox papers like on the mainland; most papers are owned and run in Tasmania by non-profit groups, including online centres and councils. Of those that are businesses, there's the Font PR owned Derwent Valley Gazette, The Sorell Times, the Tasman Gazette and the East Coast View. And there are the Northern Midlands Courier in Longford and The Coastal Column in St Helens. They operate on wafer-thin margins and the blood, sweat and tears of their owners. Mark Thompson, the former director-general of the BBC and current chief executive of The New York Times, suggested recently that closures of local newsrooms and newspapers will only increase without a dramatic shift in policy and investment:

A society which fails to provide its different communities and groups with the means to listen and come to understand each other's pasts and presents should not be surprised if mutual incomprehension and division are the consequence. If you doubt that any of this connects to real world politics and national wellbeing, you need to pay more attention.

One of the long-term effects of declining local news will be more fractured communities that are less informed, leading to less ability to forge a national consensus. For example, WIN has begun to fill its air time by broadcasting content from the 24-hour news channel, Sky News, across all its markets nationwide. Whilst Sky offers a reasonable news service during the day, Sky News After Dark, modelled on Fox in the US, is a very different beast—populated nearly exclusively by hard Right ideological commentators who have no regard to facts. I admit here, I've never done drugs, but on the odd occasion when I stumbled across Sky 'after dark', I wonder if that's what tripping out feels like—a discombobulation of body and mind.

We should expect to see a decline in civic health in areas where there is a lack of local news. A 2016 study by King's College London found that UK towns whose local papers had suffered closure showed a 'democracy deficit' that resulted in measurably reduced community engagement by local people and a heightened distrust of public institutions. It's odd that, in a world where the repository of the world's collective knowledge is literally at our fingertips, distrust in such knowledge and apathetic ignorance of that knowledge have never seemed higher. Flat-earthers, the 'birthers' who hounded Obama, the rise of Nazism in the West and an almost boastful and wilful ignorance of Nazism's causes and effects, the antivaccination movement, the 'death tax' at the May election, the maelstrom of misinformation and disinformation that swirls by the hour around the Trump administration—we have left the information age behind us and are well into the disinformation age. I would suggest that members of this chamber take a look at the recent speech by Sacha Baron Cohen to the Anti-Defamation League, where he warns of the dangers that Facebook, and specifically its strident refusal to act on disinformation and lies in political advertising, poses to our democracies and to social cohesion.

You might ask, Mr Deputy Speaker, in the face of the immediate crisis facing the communications and media sector: where is the Australian government in all of this? A few weeks ago the government hosted the Symposium on Choice and Quality of News and Journalism at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga. At this forum, the minister cautioned that there were significant questions and practical issues associated with greater support for local journalism, specifically the government grants for journalists suggested in the ACCC's digital platforms report, an indicator that the government would be taking a wait-and-see approach.

In response to this, I would echo the sentiments of the shadow minister for communications, which are that this government has waited and overseen the decline of regional media over the past six years, and it has failed to deliver a plan to address it. This government stuffed up the delivery of the National Broadband Network, crippling digital productivity in Australia's regions and widening the digital divide between city and country, when the NBN could have narrowed that divide. This is a government that has slashed $366 million in funding to the ABC, a broken promise that puts at risk the ABC's exceptional record of delivering programming excellence for our regions. The latest budget locks in $83.7 million in cuts over three years, kicking in this year, when the ABC is doing such a mighty job of keeping Australians informed about the worst drought in living memory. This is a government that has presided over an explosion in scams delivered over the phone and the internet and has not done enough to protect Australian consumers. Australians lost $489 million in 2018, an increase of $149 million on the year before. I shudder to think what the 2019 figure will be. This is a government that delivers small because it thinks small, and that is the essence of the bill before the House today. I have great pleasure in seconding the shadow minister's amendment. Labor's not opposing this bill but, by gee, it's nothing to be excited about.

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