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

I acknowledge that this is Senator Hume's first question in this place, and also congratulate her on a magnificent first speech last night. Mr President, colleagues: I think we are all aware that technology, the avenues that that provides the people to consume media and the choices that consumers must themselves make are rendering our existing media laws progressively redundant. They simply do not reflect the world that we currently live in.

At present, we have five media laws with quaint names—the five-four rule, the two-to-a-market rule, the one-to-a-market rule, the 75 per cent audience reach rule and the two out of three rule. What the government is proposing is to abolish the 75 per cent audience reach rule and the two out of three rule, and to leave the other media rules in place. Now, if the parliament chose to do that, it would represent the most significant media reform in a generation. The purpose of reforming our media laws is to enable Australia's media organisations to configure themselves in ways that best suit their business and best support their viability. It will give media organisations, if they choose, the opportunity to build scale through changing their configurations.

I think it is important for colleagues to know that changes to media laws will not see any changes to the existing requirements from, and scrutiny by, the ACCC, or any changes to Foreign Investment Review Board requirements, should those apply to any proposition. In fact, the government has asked the ACCC to update its public guidance on its approach to media mergers, to provide transparent information on how these would be treated— (Time expired)