Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I am hoping to be able to have a framed copy to put on my wall soon of today's front page. But let me be clear: in addition to media diversity rules in the UK and the US, media diversity safeguards have been legislated in Canada, Germany, South Africa and many other free democratic nations. So those opposite who want to say that this is somehow a unique intervention need to lift their head out of the Daily Telegraphlift their head out of page 4 and page 5—and actually have a look at what the rest of the world has done.

Those opposite watered down the cross-media laws and Senator Joyce crossed the floor and stood with us, because he knew that this was not a good policy to pursue. We said 5½ years ago that we would pursue this and we would introduce legislation to strengthen the media laws in this country. (Time expired)