Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Smith, in his role as chair of the government's communications and arts committee, for his advice and counsel and stewardship of these matters through the internal processes of the party.

I think all colleagues would recognise that Australia's media laws were crafted in an analog era for an analog world, and the ways that consumers are accessing their media—the options that technology is presenting for their consumption of media—are bit by bit rendering the existing media laws redundant. Also, a number of media organisations are finding that the existing media laws are constraining their capacity to configure themselves in ways that are the best for their business and best for consumers.

So I announced earlier today that the government will be seeking to abolish what is known as the 75 per cent audience reach rule, which prevents a collection of licences having more than 75 per cent coverage of the Australian audience, and to abolish what is known as the two out of three rule, which prevents merging of more than two out of three of the regulated traditional media platforms controlled by an organisation—those traditional media platforms being print, TV and radio.

This is good news for the media industry. It will be good news for consumers, and I think I will shortly have the opportunity to share why it will also be particularly good news for regional consumers. We need to make sure that the media laws that we have are appropriate and recognise the world that we live in today. We have to be always ready to change to suit technology.