Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I have heard much better attempts by the Labor Party to cover its defence of the big oil companies and the big end of town than that one. Senator Joyce has brought forward a prescription for keeping independent petrol dealers in the business and is looking to the interests of small towns as a consequence of that. It shows he has a bit more experience there than the Labor Party. The first thing to be said about this is that the Labor Party, on my reading of it, is going to defend the cross-media ownership rules from changes proposed by the government, and that is all about percentages. That is all about sections of the market. That is all about how many media outlets big corporations can own. It restricts them from the city right through to the smallest places in the bush. So Labor is defending a prescription for what is, if I heard Senator O’Brien correctly, a Soviet style—