Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Bragged about it. To quote Senator Hanson-Young, they crowed about it. They're doing in the ABC and they're doing in SBS.

Then they had to find a way for Senator Xenophon and the NXT to keep their hands clean of this dirty deal. I have worked with Senator Xenophon on many occasions and I have an incredible amount of respect for Senator Xenophon on many issues, but, Senator Xenophon, you are better than this deal. You are better than this dirty deal that has been done at the eleventh hour. Frankly, you have enabled and you are enabling what will be a funding cut to the ABC and an attack on the ABC. We know what happened here. Xenophon's party said, 'We can't have our hands on anything dirty happening with the ABC because of our base,' and the government said, 'Fine. We'll just separate it out. We'll deal with it at the next budget, we'll deal with it at MYEFO and we'll deal with it in other ways.' We know this because One Nation are saying this. They're saying they're supporting all of this because of what will happen to the ABC and SBS. When we get to the committee stage, we'll have an opportunity to go into this in more detail.

Let's be clear: media diversity should not be traded off in exchange for support for journalism. It's not an either/or proposition. Australia can do both. I've had the fortunate opportunity through this Senate to chair a committee inquiry into public interest journalism. We started off with these big ideas—big ideas, Senator Xenophon—about creating tax deductibility around journalism. Do we look at taxing some of the big aggregators like Google and Facebook and using that money to pay for public interest journalism? All of that's gone. Now we have a $60 million slush fund, and let's be clear about where it will go. Again, we'll have an opportunity in the committee stage to get to the detail of this. It won't go to The Guardian. It won't go, it appears, to BuzzFeed and others. It is structured in a way so that the conservative parties, the Liberal and National parties, could get it through their own base.