Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

In the final hours of the 2013 election, speaking live from the Penrith football stadium, Tony Abbott stared down the barrel of the camera and promised the Australian people—and we all remember this very clearly—that there would be no budget cuts to the ABC or SBS. 'No cuts to education,' he said, 'no cuts to health; no change to pensions; no change to the GST; and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.' In less than nine months, Australia learnt exactly how much this eleventh-hour pledge and the words of both the Abbott and Turnbull governments were truly worth.

Despite their promise, the Abbott and Turnbull coalition governments cut the ABC's funding by $355 million over five years in their first budget. But that wasn't enough. They then cut funding even further in the 2016 budget. Remember? 'No cuts to ABC or SBS.' The Australian public has been duped by this. One doesn't need the ABC RMIT Fact Check to see that this election promise was not just a broken promise; it was shattered, with the shards swept under the rug in the hope that nobody would notice. The Australian public did notice. Undoubtedly, since that time, it has become a pledge that the other side wish the member for Warringah had never made.

So how can the Australian people place their faith in this government—the very same government that looked Australia in the eye and promised to pursue a positive future for their trusted public broadcasters but didn't even wait a year before shattering that promise? Now the Turnbull government pushes for the removal of the two-out-of-three rule while cutting deals to cut funding to the ABC, and they expect the Australian people—and Labor—to fall for it. We certainly will not. We will stand with the Australian people. Labor will continue to stand up and support the best interests of the Australian people and our media industry by supporting the reforms that the sector has asked for time and time again, not by further undermining our public broadcasters and not by approving the government's disastrous plan to remove this two-out-of-three rule.

This direct assault on our public broadcasters—the ABC and SBS—in this ridiculous deal just confirms how low the Turnbull government is prepared to stoop. It is bemusing and shocking to think that this is Malcolm Turnbull, the same person who, in the past, one would never have expected to behave, and indeed perform, as a member of parliament, in this way. But he has proven that he is utterly desperate and bereft of integrity by bowing to One Nation's demands in order to scrape these flawed media ownership changes through this parliament. It really is the epitome of the chaos inside the Turnbull government that it is now hell-bent on destroying the diversity of the media industry in this country, which is already—and we must never forget this—one of the most concentrated media markets in the world.

Not only will they repeal this two-out-of-three, cross-media ownership rule; they will hand over an unprecedented concentration of media power to a privileged few commercial operators. It is clear that doing that is an attack on the ABC, in particular, and will diminish the independence of our national broadcaster. On top of that, we've heard of the Turnbull government's mysterious grant of some $30 million to Fox Sports. What does this prove? Again, I think this proves that the Minister for Communications is incapable of anything but doing some secretive, backdoor deal-making when it comes to our media laws.

I understand that Senator Hanson made it clear that she would be gunning for the ABC's funding. We know she doesn't like the ABC. But, with Malcolm Turnbull proving to be such an unfortunately weak leader, it seems that One Nation have ended up calling the shots when it comes to negotiating the ABC's budget next year. Both the Turnbull government and One Nation insist on ignoring the fact that the ABC in Australia is one of the most trusted institutions. They completely ignore the love and support that the Australian community has for its ABC, its national broadcaster—something we all should be proud of. Instead of that, they want to gut it. They want to undermine it. They want to do deals behind closed doors. It is simply lazy politics and it flies in the face of the idea that it's in the public interest. They ignore the fact that Australians value their ABC. Australians don't want their government gutting their ABC.

Why does the Australian community have that sense of ownership over its ABC? Because it's our national broadcaster. It lives by a charter of reflecting Australian stories and reflecting who we are as a nation. The last thing a federal government should be doing is gutting an institution that the Australian people trust and love and want to enjoy through seeing themselves on the screen. Where does this leave us as a nation, if this government is going to continue down this path of ripping millions upon millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars out of our ABC? It is simply ridiculous and shameful that this government is doing this by trying to get these media reforms through after doing dirty deals with those crossbench senators.

The Turnbull government, as I said initially, has for a very long time delayed the vital broadcasting reforms that are needed in the media industry—and we acknowledge those that are needed—choosing instead to hold its reform package to ransom over its obsession with repealing the two-out-of-three rule. I think the government needs to accept the will of the people and move on. There is no gamesmanship in the opposition to the further consolidation of power of the dominant voices in the Australian media. Instead Labor is standing up for the public interests of our great democracy by opposing this repeal rule.

When our shadow minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, called publicly for a thorough examination of the state of the Australian media landscape, Minister Fifield rejected these suggestions and claimed that 'all the relevant facts are already known'. This was despite the fact that the last Productivity Commission inquiry into broadcasting reported on was in the year 2000. Clearly, the facts are not already known, which is why so many disparate reviews and inquiries have popped up to fill that evidentiary void created by Minister Fifield's inaction—an inaction that has gone on now for four years. After four years, this is what we end up with as legislation. That's how long it has taken for this government to conduct a comprehensive and evidence based approach to media reform. Instead, we have chaos and backroom deals with no progress to show.

The Australian Labor Party is extremely disappointed that the Turnbull government has not secured more in the way of public interest considerations in return for the abolition of licence fees. It is imperative that Australians reap a return on the use by broadcasters of the radio frequency spectrum—a valuable public resource that is essential to the digital economy. Despite the fact that Labor regards the Turnbull government's measures as an inadequate and piecemeal attempt at media reform, it is the unfortunate truth that we must take what little progress we can get out of this lazy effort made by this government, which has taken almost four years to make any progress on broadcasting reform at all.

Labor supports several of these measures of the bill because, in truth, it was Labor that proposed them in the first place, having led the way on broadcast licensing fees, gambling advertising restrictions and funding to support the broadcasting of women's sport. But, when the Turnbull government announced that it would provide $30 million over four years to support women's and niche sports, Labor noted the government's support for women and niche sports but also noted that under a Labor government the funding would have been directed to the ABC. The ABC has been broadcasting women's sports for years—a free-to-air platform available for all, rather than a platform only available to 30 per cent of households. So let's be really clear here: taxpayer's money—$30 million of it—has gone to a pay TV broadcaster that only reaches 30 per cent of Australian households. That is disgraceful. It should have gone to our public broadcaster where it is available for every member of the public. That would be in the public interest.

But this wasn't about providing millions of dollars that would benefit the public and be in the public's interest to watch women's sport. No; this was about doing a deal with Fox. This was about commercial interests. Prime Minister Turnbull needs to realise he's a Prime Minister; he's not a businessman. He's not doing deals as a businessman with other commercial entities; he's doing a deal with our taxpayers' dollars—the dollars of the workers of this country who pay tax and expect their government to deliver that money for the public good. It is absolutely bizarre that the government gave $30 million to Fox Sports. There are so many people in my electorate that I know do not have pay TV and will not be able to access women's sport because of this deal done by this government. That's how out of touch they are. Do they not realise that the majority of the Australian people don't subscribe to Fox TV? What are they going to do next? Will they start advertising on behalf of Fox, telling people to sign up? It is absolutely absurd.

These are the flaws that we find in relation to media reform in this country. I've made it very clear that Labor will support those good measures because they're the measures that Labor put forward in the first place all those years ago. But we will not support the stupid measures that are in place, such as the two-out-of-three rule that absolutely dilutes any media diversity in this country. We will always stand up for the ABC and SBS, our public broadcasters, that do so much to tell the stories of this great multicultural nation, to tell our Indigenous stories and to tell all of the different stories that make up who we are as Australian people. That's what the Australian people want to see in their national broadcaster. That's why Labor stands as we do on this bill. (Time expired)