Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Left have a warrior in Lindsay, but even the Left put the Left out of action in relation to this particular matter. The Left did the Left and Lindsay has moved on. He has been replaced by a number of people ever since. Let us have a look at what was said to Jason Koutsoukis in the Age on Wednesday, 9 June 2004: ‘Labor drafts media shake-up’. I want to quote Lindsay Tanner. Senator Carr was laughing, regrettably, at his colleague in the Left, who at least tried. Unfortunately, Mr Tanner has been done by Senator Carr and others in the Left, who are determined to stymie any media reform in this country at all. But I will give Mr Tanner his dues. As he said to Jason Koutsoukis:

I am in favour of less regulation and greater liberalisation in the sector and one thing I am very happy to be put to the test on is that when our final position comes out it will be aiming for a net substantial liberalisation.

He held radio up as the prime example of the benefits liberalisation can achieve:

I think the Australian radio sector is a very good illustration of what competition can do. The statistics on radio are quite impressive. We have 60 per cent more commercial radio stations today than we had in the early ’90s; our population has grown by 11 or 12 per cent, yet revenue in the sector has grown by 80 per cent and profits have more than doubled. I don’t think there is any doubt the sector, commercial, community and public, is substantially better than it was.

He went on to say in relation to foreign ownership:

… it is still my view that foreign ownership restrictions … should be lifted.

In the Australian Financial Review on 9 June, in an article titled ‘Markets need bigger doses of competition’ by Lindsay Tanner, he even went on and attacked the government for ‘dithering about prospective liberalisation of television broadcasting’. He attacked the government, and what did we have in 2005? What have we got in 2006? In 2004 we had Lindsay Tanner, who was prepared to address these matters, and in 2006 we have the Australian Labor Party, which again is back to the early nineties. Why would that be?