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

I thank Senator Smith for his question and also acknowledge his expertise in this area. He is someone who, from his former professional experience, understands that the line is ever blurred between carriage providers, content providers and media organisations.

As all colleagues should know, media reform is important because it is part of managing the transitioning economy. One of the issues with the media laws that we currently have is that those that govern what are sometimes called 'traditional media platforms'—or, as those media organisations prefer to be known, 'media organisations of long standing'—were crafted in the year 1987, which, as Senator Smith, Senator Payne and, I think, Senator Conroy would know, was the year that New Order released their landmark album Substance on both vinyl and CD. To be fair, it is not actually an album that formed part of the genre of tastes of the Attorney. That is recognised. But I think that cultural reference indicates just how out of date our media laws are.

The media laws that we have and that this government is looking to remove our sensational in many respects, apart from the fact that they do not recognise the fact that the internet exists. That is a small problem. They cater for newspapers, commercial radio and commercial TV, but the internet is not something that was contemplated by the drafters of the law at that time, which is why we are looking to remove the reach rule and the two-out of-three rule.