Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I listened to the speech of Senator Brandis, and I have to say that the emasculation of the English language that we have just heard from Senator Brandis suggests to me that a number of members of the government benches today have swallowed a thesaurus. But let’s get away from the literary game that is being played over there—the number of big words you can get into a five-minute speech. Let’s go to a member of the government who understands this issue, a person whom I have the very highest regard for, and that is Mr Paul Neville, a National Party member from Queensland—a member of the National Party who, unlike most of the rest of that fast-fading rump, makes a contribution to debates in this parliament.

Mr Neville is the chair of the backbench communications committee of the government. How did he describe the proposals put forward by Senator Coonan, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts? He stated that they are:

… the exact opposite of competition. It’s centralising and consolidating regional markets, it’s not creating a more vibrant and competitive market.

He went on to say:

If you can’t stand your ground on issues like this, you may as well not be here.

What a condemnation of all of the other members of the government parties, toadying along on these proposals to destroy the cross-media ownership laws. Mr Neville is on the money on this one. Mr Neville and those other few people on the government benches hopefully will continue to stand up against these outrageous proposals put forward by the minister, Senator Coonan.

Senator Ronaldson started his contribution by claiming that the Labor Party did not have any policies. Let me remind Senator Ronaldson that on the issue of media ownership the Labor Party has had a consistent policy for years and years, going back to the days when we were in government. It is a pro-consumer policy. It is an anti-media-monopoly policy. It is a policy which is pro media diversity. It is a policy that is anti the concentration of media ownership.

It was very instructive and indeed enjoyable last night to watch Paul Keating interviewed on the Lateline program, because if ever any member of the parliament in those years of the Labor governments took on the issue of protecting the cross-media ownership laws it was the former Prime Minister, Paul Keating. And he was right. The policy of the Labor Party is to maintain the cross-media ownership laws so that we maintain diversity in this country, so that we prevent the two large media organisations, the Packer empire and the Murdoch empire, from effectively taking control of the print media, the television media and the multimedia in this country—both free-to-air and pay TV.

The minister today, in answer to the first question from the opposition, said that the government had no plans to weaken the media laws. I think Senator Coonan may actually believe that, because the minister does not know. This policy of destroying the cross-media ownership laws is not being run by Senator Coonan. This is being run straight out of the Prime Minister’s office, because he has always wanted to do this. Now that they have control of the Senate, they believe they can achieve it. It was always the Senate that prevented them from destroying the cross-media ownership laws.

If you think that the scandals that surrounded the cash for comment saga, which the Prime Minister’s pet journalist and commentator, Alan Jones, was involved in, then you have not seen anything yet. When it comes to what will happen once the two media organisations gain virtually total control of the media in this country, it will be a scandal and it will lead to far less diversity and far less accountability. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

(Quorum formed)