Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting the amendment, and I wish to place on record why. The amendment proposes to oppose schedule 1 and the removal of the cross-media laws in their entirety while supporting the retention in the bill of the removal of the foreign ownership restrictions and the imposition of local content requirements. The retention of the cross-media laws would ensure that Australia’s media industry simply remains unamended and, as I have said in earlier contributions, trapped in a 20th century world where radio, free-to-air television and old-fashioned newsprint are regarded as the only sources of news, entertainment and diversity of opinion.

For 20 years, Australia’s media companies have laboured under a very restrictive regime that actually rewards complacency and does not permit growth across platforms. We need to be very clear that the cross-media laws impose a regulatory straitjacket on the media industry, and of course that ultimately has costs for media companies and for consumers, who both expect Australia to be in the global environment for media and certainly expect media companies to be providing services they both expect and want.

The diversity goals of the cross-media rules can be achieved. They are very important. Let me acknowledge that: the diversity rules are very important. The diversity goals can be achieved in other, less punitive and restrictive ways. This is basically what the government has proposed. The continuation of such restrictions while foreign ownership controls are removed really makes no sense. That is a very puzzling position. It would prevent any local companies from responding to the competitive threat of new entrants, because they would be paralysed in their current structure, while foreigners could simply invest in such a way that they would provide a serious competitive threat. I welcome foreign investment—don’t get me wrong about that—but I simply do not think that you can have foreign investment at the expense of local media companies.

Imposing local content requirements—I will just specify it again, because it is a critical part of the package—on a regional radio sector that is prevented from expanding across media would also directly impact on the viability of that sector. We have to get a bit of reality into this debate. You cannot hobble a particular sector of the media so significantly with obligations and not at the same time give them some capacity to be able to attract investment, grow and take advantage of other new platforms in a way that is going to mean that ultimately consumers would not be disadvantaged. Consumers need to be advantaged by these arrangements, not disadvantaged. I believe that the set of protections that we have built into this test adequately does that.

It is also important to say that the removal of the cross-media restrictions will allow media companies to be able to continue to meet some of the obligations that they currently have to the broader Australian community. Yesterday I referred—and it is really worth saying—to the fact that as a community we really value Australian content. We impose—at some significant expense, as I am constantly reminded by free-to-air television broadcasters—a requirement that they must provide 55 per cent Australian content. It is simply unrealistic to expect that these kinds of companies, which are commercial operations, can be expected to continue to meet those kinds of obligations and other regulatory requirements in relation to content and standards—and Australian content in particular, which is a very important thing—and not have some idea about what is needed for them to be able to properly deploy their assets.

With the tests that have been put in—the cross-media changes, which are now very rigorous indeed, limiting the types of mergers, limiting the number of mergers and ensuring that there is local content—we just have to stop being timid about this or we will never move from a 20-year-old law made at a time when none of these other platforms and technological changes had been heard of or even thought of. The rules might have been appropriate for another era; they are certainly not appropriate for the 21st century in circumstances where we are also moving into the digital space and, in order to meet the needs of consumers, companies are going to need to be able to continue to grow and invest.

Question agreed to.