Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution in this debate on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund) Bill 2017. I was a member of the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee during its inquiry into this matter. We know that the bill would amend the Broadcasting Services Act of 1992 to establish the legislative framework for a regional and small publishers innovation fund, called the Innovation Fund. We know that the proposal from the government was designed as a grants funding scheme to be administered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, and the purpose of that fund was to enable the ACMA, on behalf of the Commonwealth, to make a grant of financial assistance for the publisher of a newspaper, magazine, other periodical or to a content service provider. I think there were about nine or 10 submissions to this inquiry, if I recollect correctly.

At the time of writing the report, the Labor senators added additional comments. One of the things that we talked about, particularly in those additional comments, was the Turnbull government—but also the Abbott government—basically being asleep at the wheel for many years prior to addressing the crisis that was facing public interest journalism in Australia. That was highlighted through the representations and witnesses during the committee inquiry.

We also acknowledge that it was Labor that established the Convergence Review and the Finkelstein inquiry, both of which have been comprehensively ignored by the Turnbull government. It was also Labor who established the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism with the support of the crossbenchers. So it was the activities of Labor that, in a lot of respects, initiated looking into the issues facing public interest journalism in Australia.

Labor senators noted that the Liberal-National government has cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the ABC and SBS. In the budget yesterday we saw the freeze on the ABC, which will impact their ability to progress some of their opportunities—just through mindless cuts by this government. The ABC and SBS both provide, I think, trusted investigative journalism in this country.

The government has also repealed the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule, and that also provides greater opportunity to consolidate Australia's already highly concentrated media sector. It has gone so far as to threaten journalists with criminal sanctions simply for doing their jobs, and that was in conjunction with the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Bill 2017—the FITS Bill.

The fact that the Liberal-National government is continually taking money away from organisations, such as the ABC and SBS, that do have good investigative journalism is outrageous. At the time of writing the report, it looked like the Turnbull government was backing down on that bill. Again, a lot of that was because of the opposition from Labor and the media sector.

We also noted that the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund existed only because of the backroom deal between the Turnbull government and the crossbench in exchange for the support of the repeal of the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule. Rather than the Turnbull government being anywhere near interested in, and genuinely committed to, promoting public interest in journalism—they're not interested in that—they're interested in doing a deal to progress and help their mates in the media, the big businesses of this country, and not provide good investigative journalism for the public of Australia to read or listen to.

We know that the two-out-of-three rule was directed at ensuring that no individual or company controlled more than two-out-of-three regulated media platforms—commercial television, commercial radio and associated newspapers—in the same licence area. It stopped any one voice from becoming too dominant and promoted diversity through competition between different voices—that was what that was about. The Turnbull government did a dirty deal with the crossbenchers to get that through—shove it through—at the expense of what I would say is creative investigative journalism.

Australia's level of media ownership concentration is one of the highest in the world. Yet, again, the Turnbull government junked a safeguard that prevented it from getting worse. Again, they did that deal, on the two-out-of-three rule, with their mates on the crossbench to push it through, which impacted on the ability of people to have access to good investigative journalism.