Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

They certainly do that, Senator Brandis—their position can be ignored. For those who think that is a good outcome, there is only one reason that outcome came about. You cannot have it both ways; you cannot say what was proposed initially was right and the amendment is also right. If you believe the initial position is right then you should not support this amendment. Why would you? If you believed the initial position is right—and I disagree with you fervently—you would knock this amendment out. But this is an instance of trying to invigorate in the Senate a proper sense of debate. If this proper sense of debate had been seen during the media debate, maybe we would have had a different result because the proof is in the pudding there today.

This step goes hand in hand with cross-media ownership and the new mergers and acquisitions powers. Hand in hand, the nation will walk down the path with these and we will see where we end up. We are going to have a new landscape in which you could have a private equity firm from the US controlling one of the major media houses, and another private equity firm from the US controlling another major media house. There is no register of interest in those private equity houses, so you do not know who is backing them; you do not know what their vested interests are. The world is awash with funds, but we have changed it so the main staple, the fourth estate that protects this democracy, is now going into an uncertain area. I hope it works out well, I really do. I do not want to be a Cassandra; I hope it works out well.

But if it does not, if we have got ourselves into a position where these have been foisted on us, you will not have the power in this chamber to be able to change it back. The power of an overcentralised media is immense. It is clearly defined as going hand in hand with democracy. This is why this is so important. It goes beyond small business. It goes beyond being partisan about an issue. It is about dealing with the environment Australia is in as of this morning. This morning every paper talked about a flurry of media mergers. It is this chamber that has delivered those, and you must accept responsibility for where it goes; you must acknowledge your role in that process.

With respect to all of the decisions and deliberations that made up your vote, you must wear that for the rest of your life. You cannot step away from it and give some paltry excuse as to why it may be so, because in the end you had the freedom of this nation to be able to vote as you wished to. The moment that freedom is taken away from the Senate, it works its way down and down and down until it starts taking away from the freedom of the nation itself. Your responsibilities to that freedom are far higher, I hope, than your responsibilities to any other body. I hope that, in good conscience, the decision you make in this chamber takes into account first and foremost our nation and then your state. In the discussions that will be had from now on, I hope you will be able to explain—on this mergers and acquisitions power and its relationship to the former media ownership power—how it is good for your nation and your state, and give proper account of yourself to the Australian people in your explanation. That is important.

I will be moving an amendment to this to try to at least get an increase in the time limit for the ACCC. It is the most minor of amendments to give the ACCC more time. We brought this up with the ACCC; we talked about this during the cross-media ownership debate. The ACCC was held out as the arbiter and protector of media diversity over and over again, but what does the next piece of legislation do? It gets rid of the time frame in which the ACCC deals with that. The question was asked of the ACCC, ‘Isn’t there a piece of legislation out there that can circumvent your powers?’ The reply was, ‘That is a matter of policy,’ which is code for, ‘You are dead right.’ That is the issue we are dealing with here today.

My final point is: you are about to vote on mergers and acquisitions powers, not the Dawson committee. If someone has endowed you with a sense of connection or threat or purpose that it is connected to something else— (Time expired)