Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this important debate on the media and free speech. The contribution from Senator Sinodinos is, as always, measured and considered, unlike the contribution from Senator Brandis. Perhaps that is being unfair to Senator Brandis—his contributions are usually theatrical and over the top!

The reality is that most Australians get this debate—they really do get this debate. You are unable to wander throughout your electorate or any part of South Australia and not have someone question a media article, whether it is about their football team or a particular line of reporting. We do read and value our papers and every Australian enjoys—or at least looks to enjoy—the freedom of the press. That is an ideal that is genuinely supported on both sides of the chamber. There is no doubt about that.

A really casual observation about the media, if you read the business press, would be that there is pressure on advertising budgets—whether people will pay the $15,000 or $20,000 to advertise in a national newspaper and take out a page. Interestingly enough, we saw some very good examples of that during the MRRT debate where space was booked out for a very powerful lobby group to get their point of view across. But pressure on advertising is evident in the print media. That pressure has meant—this is another casual observation—that there has been a reduction in the number of journalists employed in Australia. Someone would probably have to go out and count how many journalists we have lost this year or perhaps the last 15 months, but just reading the business press and the media generally it is apparent there has been a reduction in the number of journalists.

We know that the journalist pool is long lived. We have Michelle Grattan and Laurie Oakes still the doyens of the press gallery here in Canberra, so we know we have people who have been around forever. But we also know there is increasingly less opportunity for journalists to participate in the print media and if you combine that with a concentration of media ownership then perhaps there should be a place for a member of the public to take their concerns. I am not worried about politicians or the people in this chamber; we can come in here and say what we like and put out media releases until we are blue in the face—some get picked up, some do not. But the person in the street who may feel aggrieved by an unsavoury or unfavourable media report—what do they do? They can go and hire a lawyer; they can sue for defamation; they can even make a complaint to the owner of the newspaper.

If you actually support diversity and stronger self-regulation then this media legislation should be supported. We want to ensure as far as the public is concerned that they can be confident that their concerns about what is reported in the press will be taken seriously and considered independently away from newspaper proprietors. Australia has one of the most concentrated media industries in the world and the objective of this legislation is to ensure that there is no further reduction in media diversity.

Two past chairs and the current chair of the Australian Press Council told the Finkelstein inquiry there were flaws in the operation, funding and independence of the Australian Press Council. This is not the government; these are the people who run the Australian Press Council. The Australian Press Council said in its submission that publishers could withdraw at any time without adverse consequences, raising the point that publishers would not lose privacy protections if they withdrew. This is something the APC raised at the inquiry. Then you have the contribution from the former chair, Ken McKinnon. He has raised concerns about the council's independence, saying that proprietors who support the Press Council are equally interested in influencing its actions. He told the inquiry that an editor once said to him: 'If you promise not to uphold any complaints from my paper we will double our subscription, is that a deal?' How is that independence? How is that good governance?

The truth is the APC has improved but only because the government initiated the convergence and Finkelstein inquiries. If the government's proposals are not supported there will be nothing to stop the APC returning to the bad old days where its independence is compromised and publications can threaten to walk out and withdraw funding if they do not like a decision. As I have already said, as a politician I can use the media to argue my case. If I have the money I can sue for defamation or libel. But these reforms are not about politicians or people who have the means to defend themselves; they are about ensuring the public has an independent, transparent body they can go to if they have a concern about what appears in the press so it can be heard and considered appropriately. There are many occasions when an injured party, rightly or wrongly, would seek to have their concern addressed. This allows them to have it addressed.

On the public interest test, Australia does have one of the most concentrated media sectors in the world. What we do not want to see is a further reduction in media diversity. In the United States and the United Kingdom there are public interest tests applied to mergers and acquisitions of significant media assets. In Australia, two newspaper companies deliver services online and take up 80 per cent of the Australian newspaper market. In comparison, the top two newspaper companies in the US only take up 14 per cent of the market. In a more appropriately sized market, Canada, the top two newspapers take up 54 per cent of the Canadian market. In Australia we have 11 national or metro newspapers with only three owners. Even with the advent of the internet, eight out of nine of the most popular news media websites are owned or run by the traditional media outlets.

There is, as I said earlier, a concentration of information and less people testing that information because there is less advertising and there are less journalists employed. To hear Senator Sinodinos and Senator Brandis talking, this is the end of the world as we know it, the end of democracy, because there is a perceived threat to the independence of publications. I do not know any journalists who back down from writing a fair and truthful story. I do not know, and have never met, a journalist who would not write the truth as they saw it. When I see people like Piers Akerman on the Insiders program on a Sunday morning getting extremely—what should I say?—upset about this perceived threat to his world, and when I see the other three or four journalists who were contributing to that debate with not the same level of angst, I think, 'Well, he who protests too loud really isn't contributing in a fair and proper way to this debate.'

Senator Sinodinos mentioned Ireland. Some of the more hysterical commentators have been arguing that the government's support for this media self-regulation is antidemocratic. But it is quite common. Legislation in Ireland sets out the structure and coverage of the operation of the Press Council of Ireland and the press council must meet these standard if its members are to receive protection under defamation laws. Just like the legislation that the government has proposed here, the Irish press council makes its own codes of practice and complaints-handling protocols. No-one here is seriously suggesting that the Irish do not enjoy freedom of speech or that their press is not free. In fact, Ireland scores higher on the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders than Australia does. I was interested to read the views of Michael McNiffe, the editor of the News International publication the Irish Sun, on the Irish press council. He said that the Irish press council is:

… independent of the government … accessible to everyone. People won't need to go to lawyers if they feel they have a complaint about newspapers.

Here we have a respected editor from a newpaper in the Murdoch stable talking about the benefits of government supporting the important works of media self-regulation.

The contribution from the other side of the chamber today is hysterical, over the top, and not looking after the man in the street or the voter who may want to pursue a complaint against these media barons.