Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last weekend we had the local government elections across New South Wales, and in my Hunter region I had a few friends who were successful and a few friends who weren't. I had a Labor friend, Jay Suvaal, who I grew up with in Cessnock, who was unsuccessful, but I had some Labor enemies who were also unsuccessful, so it balanced out.

What was interesting is the role of local media in this. There was a surprise result in the Newcastle election, where the incumbent Labor mayor was voted out, and it was on the back of some persistent questioning and some exposes in the local paper, the Newcastle Herald, about some of the processes in Newcastle council. I think that contributed to that. It made me think.

I had recently been approached by, I think, Country Press Australia about the plight of regional and rural papers out there in the world struggling to get by in a media world that is also dominated by the social media we heard so much about in Senator Smith's speech. When we get down to it, when we're talking about mis- and disinformation and the bill that may come here on that, we're not looking at the other side of it, which is promoting solid, trusted information that comes from local newsrooms, from local media and from people in communities. We need to do more of that. We need not just to slap down the misinformation and disinformation because that is abject; we need to increase the sources of trusted information like the Newcastle Herald, regional papers and regional radio stations.

While Meta and other big multinational companies out there in the world continue to pay little tax and walk away from undertakings they made in newsrooms to pay for news to assist these things, all things need to be on the table. There is no policy here, I'm saying from outside of politics, but this is a thought bubble. We need to start to look at turnover taxes on these companies to pay and enable local, trusted media to do their job, to enhance investigative journalism and to make our democracy better just by existing, because you can't go down every little barrel hole and take trusted information away from the people.