Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor does not oppose the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund) Bill 2017. However, the circumstances which gave rise to it coming before the parliament do require further scrutiny.

I would say by way of commencement that there is something very ominous about the fact that a bill which is about communications legislation, which is about providing a fund to assist regional and small publishers, which has the title Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund and which is brought into this House by the government cannot attract a single member from the government to speak in favour of it. Not one single government member, apart from the minister who introduced this bill in the House, has thought that this bill was important enough for them to come into the parliament and speak in favour of it. Perhaps what I'll go through, which explains some of the circumstances which brought this bill before the House, explains why there is not one government MP, and particularly not one government MP from a regional electorate, who's willing to speak in favour of the establishment of a Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund.

The context is everything. In October last year, the government was determined to remove the two out-of-three rule, which prohibited a person owning all three licences—television, radio and newspaper—in a single radio broadcasting area or in a single market. Labor opposed this proposition. The government had been pushing it for many years. The industry, particularly the television industry, had been advocating very strenuously in favour of it. Labor opposed it on public interest grounds. Quite simply, we were concerned that giving three green lights to media companies to merge would lead to fewer voices, less diversity and certainly fewer jobs in the television broadcasting industry, in the print publishing industry and in radio broadcasting. In fact, if, as many tried to argue, these mergers were going to create more jobs, it would be the first time in the history of the industry that two companies merging into one actually created more jobs. We know that this has never occurred.

The government was determined to do it, but they did not have the numbers. They didn't have the numbers to get the legislation through the Senate. So what we saw over the course of several months were more deals being done than at a blackjack table at Star Casino on a Saturday night. There was One Nation, that was willing to dust off its culture wars against the ABC—and there are always many members in the coalition parties who are willing to jump in on this one—and the result of that was the competitive neutrality review, which is nothing more than an attempt to continue the culture wars against the ABC. Why, I do not know, because if you cripple the ABC, you'll cripple the capacity of regional storytelling in this country. There is not a publisher or broadcaster in the country that has a greater commitment to rural and regional reporting than the ABC. But that is the wisdom of One Nation, and many of those opposite.

Of course, there were plans to give special tax exemptions. They were floated and sunk almost as quickly as they were raised. But then there was the Nick Xenophon Team, once a member of the other place, spectacularly imploding after the recent South Australian elections. They managed to strike a deal with the government which enabled the last bulwark against the merger of these large television entities with radio and print entities being removed. The deal that they did concluded in a fund being established, which is now the subject of this legislation, with some $50 million worth of funds to be set aside—and I'll go to the details of this in a moment—together with $8 million being set aside to create 200 short-term cadetships and another $2.4 million over three years to facilitate the establishment of 60 regional journalism scholarships.

Now, of course, Labor supports small publishers; of course, Labor supports more regional journalists; and, of course, Labor supports initiatives which will see more cadets entering the industry. But we are not convinced about the measures that are a part of what many are calling—and I happen to agree—a dirty deal with the Nick Xenophon Team to enable the largest media deregulation initiative to pass through this parliament in decades to occur. We do not think they were worth the price.

There's another important point about the context of the bills before the House, and that goes to what can only be described as the collapse of the traditional business model that has supported what we now refer to as 'traditional' media and the traditional media outlets in this country—and, in fact, right around the world. The first onset of the collapse of this business model occurred with the print media. Print media has operated in this country for close to 200 years under a pretty unsophisticated business model. You bolt a series of news stories onto the back of a big book of advertising and you sell that to your consumers. You would remember the times, Madam Deputy Speaker Claydon: on a Saturday there would be three thuds on your front lawn, which were the Saturday edition of The Sydney Morning Herald being delivered. Two of those thuds were classified advertising. It now arrives with more of a pat than a thud, in one roll. The reason for that is the collapse of the classified advertising business as it once was. That has come through online classifieds. Quite frankly, most of the print media either didn't see this happening or were not nimble enough in their response to it.

Of course, TV was second. What we are seeing is a drift of eyeballs from big screens to small screens. Quite simply, people's viewing habits are changing. It is now more the case that, if you are under the age of 20, it's more likely that you are going to be doing your media consumption on an iPhone, an iPad or an Android device than on the big box in the corner of your lounge room. And with eyeballs goes the advertising. Of course, this didn't happen alone. You saw a recycling or a pinching of content by other online players, whether that be Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter and others, but this has put enormous pressure on the traditional revenues of the traditional TV businesses in this country.

Radio, I have to say, which many were predicting was going to collapse, has seen itself being much more resilient. Perhaps that's because it's always on. You're able to listen to the radio while doing several other things, and it has been more local and more nimble, which has enabled it to persevere and succeed when many of its traditional rivals were collapsing.

Of course, we have seen jobs being lost and journalists' jobs being lost in great numbers. Over the last five years alone, over 3,000 full-time, paid journalist jobs have been lost from the industry. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance estimates that nearly one-quarter of all working journalists have lost their jobs, as we've seen these changes—technological, economic and business model changes—work their way through the industry.

So, these three things—the determination of the government to agree to remove the protections against further media mergers within the TV, radio and print media market; the fact that they didn't have the numbers, and they had to do a dirty deal with the Nick Xenophon Team and the crossbenchers; and the fact that we are seeing what many describe as a collapse in the traditional business models which have supported media in this country—are the context which brings this bill before the House.

The bill itself, as I've described in outline form, will establish a regional and small business innovation fund. It's part of a package, which also includes the establishment of a one-off funding arrangement for the establishment of cadets, and a one-off funding arrangement which will support scholarships. The fund will enable three tranches of grants, of $16.7 million each, over the period from 2018-19 to 2019-20 and 2020-21. The grants will be administered at arms-length from government. However, government has set the rules about who is and who isn't eligible for this, and the other aspects of the deal that was done. The Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, will be the independent statutory body which administers the distribution of the grants. They'll be contestable. Presumably the instruments which will be necessary to advertise the commencement of this fund will be made public soon after the passage of these bills through both houses.

We support the legislation. We are sceptical about its origins, and we are also sceptical about its capacity to make a demonstrable difference to the crisis which media is facing around the country. You would have thought, at a time where media outlets around the country, many of whom, particularly in the print media, are closing down or consolidating or reducing staff within newsrooms, that the government would take a view about the one media outlet that it, in and of itself, funds: that it would be doing more to support that media outlet to ensure that that media outlet, particularly in rural and regional Australia, was able to continue to tell stories about rural and regional Australia, and to ensure that those people are represented in the national narrative.

But, sadly, in the budget that was introduced not three weeks ago we see the very opposite of that. We see the government taking up the cudgels in the cultural war against the ABC, with $84 million worth of cuts to the ABC's triennial funding. This is nothing more than the government attacking the institution because it disagrees with some of the stories that the ABC runs. Well, I disagree with many of the stories that the ABC runs as well. I don't like it when I'm interviewed by the ABC and they give me a hard time and they put the blowtorch on the soles of my feet and take me to places that I may not necessarily like. But I understand that that's their job. I understand it is the job of a fiercely independent national broadcaster, with first-class journalists, to put the people who come to this place to the test, and people who are in government or aspire to form government to the test, to ensure that the Fourth Estate actually does its job—that it does its job of keeping the government and the elected representatives to account. For a government to punish a national broadcaster because it disagrees with its editorial content is nothing more than antidemocratic.

On budget night the cheers were audible throughout the chamber when the Treasurer announced his $84 million worth of budget cuts to the ABC. But I guarantee you this: if there are job cuts from the ABC in those very same members' electorates, they will be the first to complain. You don't have to take my word for it. There's a by-election going on in Braddon in Tasmania as we speak. And what was the first commitment that the Liberal candidate in that by-election, one Brett Whiteley—not the oil painter—gave to his putative voters? It was, 'My government's $84 million worth of budget cuts will not fall on the ABC's studio in Burnie.' There is a brave tiger; there is somebody out there championing the government's budget. Yes, 'Let those budget cuts fall on every other electorate in the country, but not on mine.' (Time expired)

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

I thank the member for Whitlam for his great contribution and for the great work that he does in this area. Like the member for Whitlam, I rise to put Labor's position with regard to the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund) Bill 2017 on the record today in light of the many deals that were done—in fact, so many dirty deals, I think the preceding speaker, the member for Whitlam, mentioned—by this coalition government. Just this week, we saw Senator Hanson's secret deal to secure her support to give $80 billion to big business, multinationals and the big banks. I think we've got the fourth iteration of that deal at the moment. They do say that sausages are like sausage making: it's horrible when you actually see the process. But when we examine the input of the 'supreme president for life', Senator Hanson, the details are truly 'offal'.

However, this particular deal, the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund, exists only because of a shoddy, last-minute backroom deal between the Turnbull LNP government and the Nick Xenophon political party, who now refer to themselves as Centre Alliance—an optimistic moniker at best. I don't think they're yet to earn either of those titles. So this fund is the result of a heavily compromised trade-off. The fund didn't come about because the Turnbull LNP government is genuinely committed to promoting public interest journalism—far from it. It came about to grease the path for the government's repeal of the two-out-of-three media control rule.

Labor will not oppose this bill, but we maintain that it does precious little to fill the void left by the repeal of the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule. This rule acted as a public interest safeguard by stopping any one voice in the media landscape from becoming too dominant. It promoted diversity and competition between different voices. A 'bulwalk against authoritarianism' is how I've always seen this media rule operating. The two-our-of-three rule ensured that no individual or company controlled more than two out of three regulated media platforms—commercial television, commercial radio or associated newspapers—in the same licence area. In essence, it was to preserve a diversity of opinion on our airwaves, and it stimulated alternative viewpoints.

Over the six months that have passed since the Turnbull government abolished the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule, cross-media merges have begun as a result. How many have actually come through? Zero. The milestone makes a mockery of communication minister Senator Fifield's alarmist urgings that parliament must act on media reforms to protect Australian jobs and to give industry a fighting chance and of his dire predictions of the failure of Australian media organisations. Senator Fifield even went so far as to suggest that Labor's opposition to the repeal was crippling the industry and limiting the options for organisations like Channel Ten. How wrong he was. Just on a sidenote, I commend Channel Ten for their stance on axing the TV show Roseanne in light of her offensive comments. They were out of the blocks quickly. Well done, Channel Ten.

Back to this legislation: development since that time clearly demonstrates just how captured by the top end of the sector the Turnbull government was, and how out of touch it clearly remains. The CBS acquisition of Channel Ten occurred thanks to the two-out-of-three rule. So, as it was actually working as designed and benefitting the sector, the geniuses in the coalition decided that they'd best get rid of the rule. So, well done! It is so dangerous without it. The repeal of this rule is a threat to informed democratic debate, as it allows a single person or organisation to control how local news is reported. This potentially gives one person a lot of power in a market where big media players are already wielding a great deal of power.

The Australian media landscape is one of the most concentrated in the world, with an extremely small number of firms producing content that reaches the vast majority of Australians. According to market research from IBISWorld from June 2016, the industry's four largest players were estimated to have accounted for over 90 per cent of industry revenue since 2015-16. These players included News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media, Seven West Media and APN News & Media. Obviously, we all know the role of our national broadcaster, the long-trusted, ever-professional ABC. In the budget, the ABC is suffering yet another cut of $84 million. That's on top of the $254 million cut in that horror 2014 budget, after the then Liberal Leader of the Opposition had said before the election that there will be no cuts to the ABC. As anyone who understands the ABC would know, there was no fat to be cut in 2014. But, after those two big cuts of $84 million and $254 million, we're not slicing off any fat; we're now slicing off muscle and making our national broadcaster less affective.

Anyway, back to this fund: this one-off fund will dispense $50 million of taxpayer funds over three years before it runs out. What then? The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, or MEAA, has expressed concern that these short-term programs, without adequate follow-up, may serve only to temporarily boost the numbers and scope of journalism and journalists. MEAA argues that the benefits of the program will be exhausted shortly after the 2020-21 financial year, unless consideration is given to sustaining these programs during their rollout.

Labor believes it is imperative that taxpayer support for journalism be ideology-free. However, there is considerable scope for government to influence the way the funding is distributed. The government already appears to be influencing the recipients of this funding through the inclusion of the foreign parent company veto. The foreign parent company veto was likely included with the aim of preventing The GuardianAustraliafrom receiving funding from this grant, given they have selectively waived the veto for other media groups. TheGuardian is a little progressive, but any progressive outfit that provides high-quality journalism on the digital platforms should be cultivated, surely.

ACMA will also have considerable leeway to decide the purposes for which funding will be allocated. The legislation does not require that an advisory committee be set up to advise ACMA. This is all subject to the minister's discretion. The whims and whimsies of the minister are supreme, as there are no checks and balances on his decision. How is the foreign parent company veto being used? A range of publishers like The Guardian, BuzzFeed and The New Daily have been excluded from the fund due to having a foreign parent company. Publishers affiliated with a superannuation fund are also excluded from accessing the fund. So, while The Guardian Australia has a foreign parent company, its local business, supporting Australian journalism and publishing jobs, depends on maintaining a viable Australian revenue model. The Guardian Australia has created 80 jobs for Australians over the last few years. The Guardian argues that is every dollar of revenue it earns in Australia is invested in Australian journalism, given they have no shareholders or proprietors to pay. If the package were really intended to boost Australian journalism, why was The Guardian excluded? The Guardian argues that this legislation disadvantages a fast-growing source of Australian news and jobs for Australian journalists, when the whole purpose of the fund is to encourage both these things—a pretty fair point, if you ask me.

How does the Turnbull government justify giving $30 million to Fox Sports but cutting Australian content creators like The Guardian Australia out of the fund? Let's just think: both are Australian companies with a foreign based parent company. It sounds a bit fishy to me; in fact it stinks. They say that a fish rots from the head first. Fox Sports, owned by News Corporation, another company with a foreign parent, was granted $30 million in the 2017 federal budget with the vague purpose of covering women's sports and niche sports. This grant was dodgy. It was provided without conditions or any transparent process. I love sport. I love netball. I love all the sorts of sports they're talking about, but last time I checked we had a public broadcaster or two funded to perform exactly this role. Don't get me wrong: broadcasting and supporting women's sport is a good use of money. Young girls can't be what they can't see—perhaps an important message for all the people on that side of the House that talk about quotas! If that were the endeavour, surely our trusted public broadcasters ABC or SBS would have been better placed to host that content. $30 million given to them to bring in those niche sports and transmit them would have gone a long way with people that know how to do it.

Like The Guardian and other outlets, publicly owned media are ineligible for funding under this measure despite the government funding cuts they have been subjected to in recent years. As I said, the budget handed down by Treasurer Morrison and Prime Minister Turnbull cuts $84 million from the ABC on top of the $254 million the LNP have already cut since the 2013 election. The sneaky way the government cut funding from the ABC, hidden in the fine print of the budget papers, was to freeze the indexation of ABC's operational funding, amounting to a cut of $83.7 million. When the ABC's core content costs are rising faster than inflation, that is an cut in absolute terms. You can't argue otherwise. They articulated that it's to ensure the ABC continues to find back-office efficiencies. I think One Nation is pursuing the fact that they might drink coffee sometimes on budget mornings out in front of Parliament House, but I'm sure there's not $83.7 million worth of coffee being consumed at the ABC. The government should know that they can't squeeze blood from a stone.

The ABC itself says it's out of fat to cut, and that it's cutting into muscle. I fear the ABC will suffer most where? In the bush. The old Nationals are signing off on cutting bush broadcasting services. Estimates last week heard that the ABC have shed 1,012 jobs since 2014, cut under the watch of Prime Minister Turnbull and Prime Minister Abbott. They know full well that this cut they are inflicting on the ABC means cuts to jobs, content and services at the ABC, particularly in the bush. The Liberals and Nationals complain that the ABC isn't doing enough news coverage, yet these hypocritical politicians have left a $43 million hole in funding for ABC news and current affairs. The ABC said the impact of the cuts cannot be absorbed by efficiency measures alone, because the ABC has already achieved significant productivity gains in response to past budget cuts.

The Liberal Party claims their budget is about investing to create more jobs every day and to support essential services, yet these cuts to the ABC will inevitably lead to job losses and a reduction in the quality or breadth of service, especially damaging for those in the bush, the rural and remote parts of Australia that are too sparsely populated to sustain commercial media. Redundancies at the ABC are on the horizon as a result of the government's cuts to the ABC in the recent budget, and the reduction in ABC services that Australians value will be the consequence of the budget delivered by the Treasurer a few weeks ago. We'll have less news and fewer jobs as a result of these attacks on the ABC.

Labor will fight these fresh cuts, just as we did last year. In government, Labor gave additional funding to set up the ABC children's channel, ABC News 24 and ABC online. Now, how's that for promoting local public interest journalism? Publicly funded broadcasters like the ABC and SBS provide an important source of public interest journalism, which is critical for a robust democracy. It is why the top floor of this building, on the Senate side, is devoted to the fourth estate. I don't think any other parliament in the world has the fourth estate inside the building, sitting alongside the lawmakers, because they serve such a crucial role. They are critical. However, government funding cuts mean the capacity of publicly funded broadcasters to produce high-quality investigative content has been smashed. The Indigenous Remote Communications Association objects to the exclusion of Indigenous licenced community broadcasters from eligibility for funding from the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund. The IRCA argued that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences utilised broadcasting services more than print or online services for their news. Why? It's because many of them are in rural and remote areas.

How is it fair that large companies like News Corp can the $10.4 million set aside for scholarships and cadetships? Why are taxpayers' funds being used for cadetship and scholarship programs at large commercial media organisations? I'm a strong believer in training and skills development, but I have to ask: what's the point of cadetship and scholarship programs in a declining market for journalism jobs? Does the industry need to train more journalists when there are not enough jobs for existing journalists? These are just a couple of questions when we look at the repeal of two-out-of-three rule and what the impacts are. Job prospects for Australian journalists are growing fewer by the day. At least 2,500 journalism jobs have disappeared in Australia over the past six years, according to MEAA. Wouldn't funds be better spent creating long-term employment opportunities in journalism? Instead, the government has slashed $84 million in funding to the ABC.

Another question is: do regional media companies have the reliable and affordable broadband they need to enable them to grow their businesses and create more jobs in the digital age? What also would be of great help in rural and regional areas would be lobbying for decent broadband. Unfortunately, the deal with Centre Alliance was not the only dirty deal done by this government to secure support for its broadcasting bill last year. Even worse than their deal with Centre Alliance was their deal with One Nation to change the ABC's charter. It is a deal clearly that is aimed at undermining the integrity of the ABC. As one of the One Nation senators has admitted publicly, this deal is absolutely a platform for fringe groups such as anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and even more dangerous right-wing groups.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Digital Transformation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank colleagues who have contributed to the debate on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund) Bill 2017. The bill will implement an important component of the government's media reform package. The government is committed to assisting small and regional publishers through a time when the media landscape is in a state of flux. Traditional revenue models have been fractured, and media organisations must adapt to move with their audiences. For smaller and regional publications, this is even more challenging. In this disrupted environment, access to locally relevant, factual journalism remains vital to develop and maintain strong communities. The government's Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund recognises this need. The $50 million will provide grants over three years to eligible media organisations for projects that enable new business models and practices. By doing so the government will assist these publishers to put themselves on a sustainable commercial footing.

I note that industry is supportive of this bill and that submissions received during the inquiry recognised the merit of developing measures to support Australian civic journalism as well as the particular need to support civic journalism in regional areas. The bill will establish the legislative framework to establish the operation of the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund. The government looks forward to proceeding with a call for applications so that ACMA can begin assessing applications and distributing these much-needed funds to regional and small publishers. I therefore commend the bill to the chamber.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.