Sharon Grierson (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week Fairfax Media announced proposed changes to editorial production arrangements at the Newcastle Herald and associated weekly community newspapers. What that means is that Fairfax Media will axe all the jobs of those employed in editorial production functions and redeploy those functions to people working at Fairfax Editorial Services in New Zealand. This proposal applies to the Herald, Newcastle Star, Port Stephens Examiner, Lakes Mail and Myall Coast Nota as well as to the Illawarra Mercury and their associated papers. In Newcastle, 36 full-time equivalent staff, comprising 41 full- and part-time positions, will be made redundant from the group of Newcastle masthead titles.

This is quite devastating. These job losses happen to real people, people we know—friends who will face unemployment. I am told that current redundancy provisions are adequate and that many people are long-term employees, but that is small comfort to those who have loyally served Fairfax and the people of Newcastle. The positions of reporters, journalists and photographers are not affected—yet—and printing will continue locally at Beresfield. That, again, is some comfort.

But what does this restructure actually mean and why has this happened? This morning I asked those questions directly to Greg Hywood, the Chief Executive and Managing Director of Fairfax Media. I thank him for taking my call. He made the point that media is moving to an increased online presence and that Fairfax Media is no exception to that transformation. Here, we all understand that transformation and we all understand that the demand for information is increasingly globalised. We are all part of that modern media reality. I have an online subscription to the New York Review of Books and the Monthly. I go onto the SMH app on my iPad each day. I check the Herald online every morning when I am in Canberra. But when I am in Newcastle I have a copy of the Herald delivered daily to my home. That is typical in regional Australia, where habit and loyalty prevail, and that is in part why regional mastheads like the Herald continue to make profits while still embracing the online media world. According to Fairfax, the Herald website is the top-ranked website in the Fairfax Regional Digital media network of 160 websites, recording 3.2 million page impressions in April. And that is the rub: regional media has consistently loyal audiences. The circulation of the Herald is more than respectable, matched by some $15m in profit last year. Fairfax Media's decision seems not to be about sustaining regional press mastheads but about those mastheads taking the hard hit to prop up Fairfax's national mastheads, the SMH, the Financial Review and the Age.

In my discussions with him, the CEO was genuinely concerned about the human cost but also genuine in his belief that these measures are a necessary step to sustain mastheads not destroy them. After explaining that the production function hub approach in New Zealand has proven to be very efficient, I asked why then Fairfax does not trial that sort of knowledge centre at premises in Australia, like the Newcastle Herald, given its scale, experience and considerable success in online activities. I asked too why his board had not chosen to explore with regional media how these efficiencies could be achieved locally and raised the fact that the Herald might have been approached to assist the transition to increased digital access to content and production services. I asked why they did not consult with their regional media workforce about savings and efficiencies.

While Greg Hywood and I agree that our roles are different, my role is always concerned with building regional economies through diversification and building knowledge. My role is always to encourage industry to retain capacity and skills in Australia. So again I say particularly to the chairman and the board, if this hub approach is the way of the future, with a focus on growing audiences and building revenue through content creation and advertising sales, then give us a go first. Do not compromise what remains profitable by reducing local content, true local engagement and the actual local factors that underpin profitability. Sustain your business by setting up a best-practice, knowledge based hub for regional mastheads in regional Australia. Use that centre to capture your competitors, who are also gradually making the online transition.

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance have rejected the company's proposal and I would suggest to the chairman, Roger Corbett—who has a strong association with Newcastle, so I am particularly disappointed—and his board that they too should rethink this proposal and build something good in this country. Make your own workers the innovators and the creators of quality and success. A local trial could bring about a win-win for Fairfax Media and regional media: the retention of local quality content and the expansion of content that builds new audiences and a greater online customer base through Australian based innovation, retaining Australian jobs and creating a prouder masthead for all.