Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Wong for her gratuitous advice. The reality is that not since the advent of the printing press have we seen such a multiplication of able editors and reporters across the media—but of course they are all found in the new media, in the emerging areas of the media, as a result of the transformation that is happening at present in the media. We are getting a very different media environment than we have had before.

The real risk inherent in Senator Conroy's answer today is that we have not a fourth estate but a government that desires to apply instead a fourth branch of government, as it is referred to elsewhere. This fourth branch will be created as a result of what the government proposes to do out of its Convergence Review and the review of the Finkelstein inquiry. The government is seeking to impose more regulation at a time when media should be facing less regulation. Today Senator Conroy was given the opportunity to provide some assurances to the media industry that they would not face increased regulation, that they would not face increased costs at a time when the media industry on its traditional platforms is bleeding jobs and bleeding profits. Instead Senator Conroy chose to defer and deflect. He chose to take his old-fashioned approach, the usual modus operandi of Senator Conroy, which of course is to go and attack somebody else; to ignore the question and go on the attack.

That is what started this whole process of potential new media regulation—Senator Conroy's desire to attack News Ltd. He called them the hate media. They were the focus of his attack for many a month. They were the reason we ended up with a media inquiry in the first place. Now, he has moved on. He has new targets of attack. His new target of attack is no longer News Ltd but instead Gina Rinehart and Fairfax. They instead are the new targets for Senator Conroy's attack. In doing that Senator Conroy is overlooking the very serious issues that are at play here when it comes to the future of media in Australia. I stand, the Liberal Party stands and the coalition stands for free speech in this country—