Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A letter has been received from Senator Fifield:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

The Government's ongoing attempts to limit a free press.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, it may have escaped the attention of honourable senators that last Friday marked the 75th anniversary of the execution of Nikolai Bukharin, one of the fathers of the Bolshevik revolution. He fell foul of Joseph Stalin and was one of the most celebrated victims of the Moscow show trials. I am aware of this fact because Mr Paul Scarr, a very good friend of mine and a very estimable man, pointed this fact out in a letter to the Australian FinancialReview last Friday and drew attention to the irony that the 75th anniversary of the execution of Bukharin should have coincided with the week in which for the first time in the history of the Commonwealth an Australian government sought to muzzle the media. Nikolai Bukharin at the height of his revolutionary powers after the Bolshevik revolution said about the freedom of the press:

We asked for freedom of the press, thought and civil liberties in the past because we were in the opposition and needed these liberties to conquer. Now that we have conquered, there is no longer any need for such civil liberties.

So said Nikolai Bukharin and he died the death of all tyrants.

I am not saying pace the Daily Telegraph last Wednesday that Senator Stephen Conroy is a tyrant. Nevertheless one finds in the attempts by the Gillard government to regulate the media with this unprecedented step the same mindset, the mindset that says, 'We are the rulers and therefore we shall decide what may be said in the course of public discussion.'

This distaste for free and robust public discussion has been one of the insistent themes of the Rudd and Gillard governments, but particularly it has been a characteristic of Senator Stephen Conroy. There could not be a worse person to be the minister for communications in any Australian government because Senator Stephen Conroy has no commitment whatsoever to freedom of communication. This is the man who sought to censor the internet. This is the man who sat in a government which sought—and still seeks, by the way—to make it against the law for people to express political opinions which other people might be offended by. This is the man who, last week, brought forward a package of media legislation which for the first time in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia imposes public limitations and public sanctions on the content of newspapers. That has never been done before in the history of the Commonwealth, although it has been done once before in Australian history in colonial times, as Senator Birmingham pointed out. It is the first time since 1827, when Governor Darling sought to license the newspapers in the colony of New South Wales, that any tin-pot dictator in this nation or in Australia has sought to say that the government is allowed to say or to at least attempt to influence what newspapers can write and publish.

Mr Deputy President, do not just take it from me. I have in my hands a copy of a letter written to Senator Conroy this morning by Mr Kim Williams, the CEO of News Limited.

Senator Mark Bishop interjecting—

You interject, Senator Bishop, mockingly about Mr Kim Williams because we know that you do not like News Limited. But Senator, through you Mr Deputy President, you tell me why a respectable private citizen who is the CEO of a major news organisation should be the subject of insult and abuse in the Australian Senate merely because he is trying to stand up for freedom of speech. Mr Williams in his communication to Senator Conroy points out the many respects in which the bill about to be introduced into the parliament stifles freedom of speech.

First of all, the regulator, the so-called—this is Orwellian—public interest monitor is not an independent officer. He is appointed by the government of the day and answerable only to the minister. There are no limitations within the legislation on what the public interest monitor might do or what matters he is required to take into account and his decisions are not reviewable. So if a complaint is made to this individual, the disposition of the complaint is not subject to the ordinary processes of administrative review by the courts. Those are, in a sense, lawyers' objections. They are serious matters but they do not go to the heart of the problem.

The heart of the problem is the mindset of a government which says, 'We need a bureaucrat, we need an official, we need a commissar to tell the public what is in the public interest to know. One man or woman of the 23 million people in Australia should have the role cast upon their shoulders by act of parliament to say, "You are the arbiter of the public interest, you will decide what the public can see or hear or read and you will decide what they are not allowed to see or hear or read."' These are small steps but they are steps in a very dangerous direction because, if ever there was a slippery slope, it is when governments decide that they should have some say in the content of what newspapers print.

We are a robust democracy, always have been. The debates in this parliament are robust, as they should be. The debates in the newspapers are robust, as they should be. Politicians of all stripes—conservative, socialist, Labor, Liberal, Green—whoever they are, if they want to participate in the democratic process they ought to accept that people are free to criticise them. They ought to accept that if people criticise them in ways that they think are unfair, then so what? Because the person who is making the criticism no doubt thinks that his criticism is fair and the truth will out from the greatest number of voices participating in the discussion with the greatest freedom from constraint. And if ever there is a body which ought not to be seeking to influence or channel or shape or limit what can be said in political discussion, it is the government itself.

As long ago as 1859, John Stuart Mill, the great 19th-century liberal philosopher, wrote this in On Liberty:

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive … to prescribe opinions to [the people], and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear.

That is what John Stuart Mill wrote more than 150 years ago. And yet, astonishingly, what one of the leading intellects of the age in Britain in the middle of the 19th century thought was an argument so arcane that it was consigned to mediaeval times so that it was no longer even necessary to defend the freedom of the press is necessary in Australia in the second decade of the 21st century. So far has this government regressed, so far has it embraced the authoritarian conceit that, because it is the government, it somehow has a wisdom superior to the public so that it has a role in shaping what may be said or published or printed or read. It is a slippery slope, but there is only one side that stands for freedom.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to in part address some of the issues raised by Senator Brandis in this discussion of a matter of public importance concerning the issue of freedom of speech. As he outlined, not in his detail and not in his conclusions, the concept itself is indeed worthy of discussion and worthy of contribution. But along with freedom of speech, there are also other matters in this discussion that are worthy of public airing, and they go to issues of control, appropriate forms of regulation, matters of diversity, matters of privacy and matters of access.

Really, over the past five days, if one was to characterise this debate, it would be fair to say that it has been mostly ignorant, generally hysterical, often ill-advised and, when you dig down to the roots of the plea put by Senator Brandis on behalf of the opposition—put but not explained—you find it is a desperate yearning characterised as a tirade for continuation and maintenance of the status quo in the form of regulation that we have for the media and other interests in this country, most of which were created 100 or 120 or 140 years ago and do not reflect the diversity of information sources that we all access and realise and rely upon every day.

What is the status quo that I refer to in this debate? It is generally old media—TV networks, publishing houses, newspaper magnates—all of whom have one common thread in their business interests, that is, their business interests are of declining value and of such declining value that they are heading at a rate of knots to zero. Like cigar rollers and cigarette manufacturers 100 years ago in New York when there were 50,000 of them, so are modern media houses racing, at a rate of knots, towards extinction, and Senator Brandis chooses to parade their arguments for protection, for subsidies, for industrial protection under the guise of freedom of speech.

All of those units I referred to—TV networks, publishing houses, newspaper magnates—have assets of declining value. TV stations with minimal or negative cash flow; newspapers with declining sales and with share prices tumbling by 50 per cent, 80 per cent and 100 per cent every three months; newspaper concerns that are subsidised by content and information from non-newspaper sources in the process of restructuring themselves to maximise hidden value remote from their ongoing significant newspaper losses.

Not since the spread of printing presses in the 15th century have we seen a threat to the control of and access to information similar to the control and distribution that we see today. And the old guard—those houses, those individuals, those companies, those units that I referred to—object strongly to the spread of that information. In the 15th century it was away from churches, away from abbeys, away from the central authority of the crowns in Europe and the United Kingdom, which controlled the creation and the dispersal of information via, generally, the churches.

Now the government's reaction has been manifold to that today. The government's reaction over the past few years to new forms of media, new forms of distribution of content, new forms of publishing has been to note ongoing industry changes but not to interfere with the market; note the declining value of mostly media assets, but, again, not interfere or seek to maintain them; and, most importantly, to note the growth of new forms of media, generally transmitted through the internet, social media, blogs, websites, online newspapers and online discussion forums. Most members of parliament, in the lower house and in the Senate alike, maintain web pages and Facebook pages and use YouTube for production media. All of those have regular forums for discussion. All of those are about the creation, maintenance and distribution of information on a whole range of areas. There is no restriction and you can do it without paying a fee. There is no threat to any of those developments. The common threads that run through those new forms of distribution of information are mass participation, no single control, self-regulation, easy access and multiple forums.

When addressing the bills that are the subject of inquiry in two committees today, the bills that are behind this matter of public importance before the chair at the moment that has been raised by the opposition, our reaction, the progressive reaction and the thoughtful reaction is to concentrate on four key principles as the old forms of media go into decline, as hundreds of thousands of people no longer purchase newspapers every day, as people no longer rely on free-to-air TV for the evening news and as individual consumers choose to access information from the sources they prefer. Our concern is not to get even with imaginary old enemies, as is characterised by Senator Brandis referring to authoritarian control in the context of freedom of speech; our concern is to ensure that as we go forward in the next 10, 20, 40 or 50 years we have an appropriate regime that allows for the continued growth of mass forms of participation in information distribution, that allows alternative sources to grow readily and to spread easily and that allows individuals to access social media, the net, blogs or whatever form is yet to be invented.

What are the matters that are more important than the declining value in the shares of Fairfax? TV networks around Australia are effectively insolvent with billions and billions of dollars of debt and have to be sold off to private interests via New York City, but what is more important are four principles. They are the four principles being discussed in the committees and which Senator Brandis chose to ignore today in this discussion: privacy, fairness, accuracy and diversity. We are simply about promoting the principles of privacy, fairness, accuracy and diversity. All of the other consequences Senator Brandis referred to in his contribution were merely straw men that he erected to defend the financial interests of those in other areas who through their own activities have ruined the share price of their own companies.

It needs to be said, and we will say it as often as it needs to be said, that the government believe in freedom of the press. We believe in it passionately. We believe it is a cornerstone of our freedoms. We do not quarrel with anything that newspaper proprietors, newspaper companies, TV stations, radio stations or whatever the form choose to write, print or broadcast. They do it every day of the week. It does not matter. If it is fair, truthful and accurate, it will be received and perceived as such. If it is not fair or accurate, it is useless and it will be received as such.

As well as saying that freedom of the press is essential and nonprotection of existing asset holders is neither here nor there, we believe quite passionately and strongly in a diversity of voices within the media. We believe a democracy of output, a diversity of perspectives and a diversity of voices in the media going forward are essential. That is why we say the four principles I referred to—privacy, fairness, accuracy and diversity— (Time expired)

Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Was it Patrick Henry who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death and I will die for your right to say what you want even if I violently disagree with you'? That is the nature of a free society—freedom of speech, and integral to that is freedom of the press. In recent times in this country we have seen an unprecedented attack on freedom of the press, motivated in part I suspect by a syndrome within this government of shooting the messenger. If they do not like the message, they shoot the messenger.

Sections of the press have been on the tail of this government because of things the government has done, not because of things the press have invented. The press have not created the stories around various things the government has done wrong. The press did not invent the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, breaking her commitment on the carbon tax. The press did not invent the cost overruns on Building the Education Revolution. The press did not invent the stories around the maladministration of the pink batts insulation program that tragically put people's lives at risk. This set of initiatives was born in part by that sort of malice and spite and wish to shoot the messenger. It came very quickly on the tail of what had happened in the United Kingdom when there were revelations around certain issues in the British press. I do not believe that the Australian press suffers from those same issues.

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy claims that this has been in gestation for the last four or five years. There have been discussion and reviews over the last four or five years and then all of a sudden the cloud burst and we got all this. With a thunderclap we got this legislation. We are told it must be passed by the end of this sitting and we should take it or leave it. There is no negotiation; it is non-negotiable. There will be a two-day inquiry by the Senate and off we will go. This piece of legislation—if I put on my hat as chairman of the deregulation task force—has no regulatory impact statement attached to it. Surprise, surprise! Regulatory impact statements are meant to be mandatory for legislation. You can have an exception if it is okayed by the Prime Minister. We still have not been told by the minister, I think, whether he in fact did get the permission of the Prime Minister to treat this as an exception. Of course, when it is treated as an exception there is a requirement, within a couple of years when the legislation has been implemented, to have a post-implementation review. Do we have even a commitment to that? These are tricky technical points? No, they are not. They go to the essence of the accountability process of public legislation: that when you put up legislation you must rigorously examine the problem that you seek to deal with and the costs and benefits of different ways of dealing with it. Again, there is no regulatory impact statement, unlike with the last set of measures around these particular areas, in 2006 under the previous government, where there was a regulatory impact statement. Why the rush? Why hide the regulatory impact of this particular measure? There is no merits review in this package either, even though it raises some very important issues.

We have a situation here where the matter was discussed, I think, under the line in cabinet. I do not know how much time ministers had to look at cabinet submissions on this matter. They are quite complex issues. If you are given a paper in the room and told, 'Here, this is where we're going; read all about it,' how does that promote an appropriate cabinet process? What about the caucus being told, 'This has to go through, and here it is'? The caucus are treated with such disrespect. There used to be a time when the Labor caucus had great authority in Labor governments, including in the time of Whitlam. That was not always to the then government's advantage, but the fact is that the caucus had real authority. Here it is being used as a rubber stamp, and the cabinet is being used as a rubber stamp. This was a deal done between the minister for communications and the Prime Minister. Some people speculate that it was actually a distraction—that they thought at the beginning of last week, 'This would be a good week to do some media stuff, because there's all sorts of stuff around; there are polls around and all the rest of it.' That is not the way to treat the parliament, the caucus, the cabinet and, through us, the Australian people.

I have to say that I am also in possession of some information provided by Kim Williams of News Ltd; that particular organisation seems to have been particularly demonised by this government. That material talks about Senator Conroy, the minister, and what he told the ABC Insiders program: that his model was just like the Irish model. This is completely untrue, according to News Ltd. Under Senator Conroy's model, the government appoints the Public Interest Media Advocate. Under the Irish model, it is the Press Council of Ireland that appoints the ombudsman and not the Irish government. At the core of Senator Conroy's model, the government has oversight. Under the Irish model, it does not. This goes to another point: the governing philosophy of Labor in power, which is to put government at the centre of the economy. We saw this during the global financial crisis: Kevin Rudd repeated his mantra that he was going to put government at the centre of the economy—'Government knows best.' That is why we have so much regulation in this economy. Interestingly, Kevin Rudd had said the very same thing in his maiden speech: 'I will put government at the centre of the economy.' So here you have a situation where again, through the Public Interest Media Advocate, we are putting government at the centre of the economy in an area where we already have at least three other regulators of different types if we are talking about situations where there may be a takeover or a merger and all the rest of it.

News Ltd go on to say that under Senator Conroy's model Australian publishing companies are punished for not joining the Australian Press Council or a similar PIMA-approved body, as they lose relevant exemptions under the Privacy Act. Without these exemptions, journalists simply cannot do their job. Under the Irish model, publishing companies are rewarded for joining the Press Council of Ireland in the form of funding towards defamation cases. They have a positive incentive to join. If they do not join, there is no penalty, and Irish journalists certainly do not lose their ability to practise journalism. How far different is the coercive Australian model from that Irish model.

On the comparison that was drawn on the Insiders program by Senator Conroy with Finland, which ranked No. 1 in the world for press freedoms as determined by Reporters Without Borders, there are differences between the Finnish model and what is proposed in Australia. Finland has no equivalent position of a public interest media advocate. There is no threat to the capacity of journalists to do their job in Finland. There is an express right to free speech contained in the Finnish constitution. Finland also has an express source protection law. News Ltd argue that the Finnish model is very different from, and not a precedent for, Senator Conroy's media model.

Senator Bishop was right to say that the old media is changing under the pressure of structural change. We know that. We know the old business models are going, and many of these media companies are looking for new media models. We all know that, and the market will determine those models. What is happening out there is a proliferation of sources of information and a proliferation of people providing information. Just look at the explosion of the blogosphere and of the Twittersphere. Indeed, some of the visionaries in the internet space have argued about how this explosion of information creates a democratisation of information and a new troop of citizen journalists. The issue then becomes: if you want to have professional journalists providing, if you like, impartial advice and expertise in the analysis of important issues, who pays for that? How is that paid for? Ultimately you have to create a market to pay for that, and that is not something that governments can protect media companies from, nor should they seek to do so.

But this legislation actually seeks not so much to protect media companies as, it seems, to protect the government by having the Public Interest Media Advocate in the midst of the situation, creating a discretion which goes on top of all of the other forms of regulation around what are already very regulated sectors of the economy—except that, for the first time, we have the spectre of regulation of the content of newspapers, something which is unprecedented in peacetime. You would say it would be a very brave government that tried to go down that route, but why create the capacity to do that if you do not have in the back of your mind the possibility of using it, or of using it as a big stick to threaten companies and to say, 'If you really want to go on a campaign against this government then you should understand that we have PIMA waiting in the wings and they will come down on you like a tonne of bricks,' or, 'If we're not happy with the extent of self-regulation and the content of self-regulation, we have a capacity to come in over the top'? That is what this discretion is all about. This is what creates the uncertainty in the minds of journalists and media proprietors: 'How far can we go in getting out of line with the government of the day?'

We are all subject to the probings of journalists, and we all know how uncomfortable that can be from time to time, but the fact of the matter is that a free press is integral to our society, and I believe that this legislation crosses the line in how it seeks to treat the press, particularly the written press.

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this important debate on the media and free speech. The contribution from Senator Sinodinos is, as always, measured and considered, unlike the contribution from Senator Brandis. Perhaps that is being unfair to Senator Brandis—his contributions are usually theatrical and over the top!

The reality is that most Australians get this debate—they really do get this debate. You are unable to wander throughout your electorate or any part of South Australia and not have someone question a media article, whether it is about their football team or a particular line of reporting. We do read and value our papers and every Australian enjoys—or at least looks to enjoy—the freedom of the press. That is an ideal that is genuinely supported on both sides of the chamber. There is no doubt about that.

A really casual observation about the media, if you read the business press, would be that there is pressure on advertising budgets—whether people will pay the $15,000 or $20,000 to advertise in a national newspaper and take out a page. Interestingly enough, we saw some very good examples of that during the MRRT debate where space was booked out for a very powerful lobby group to get their point of view across. But pressure on advertising is evident in the print media. That pressure has meant—this is another casual observation—that there has been a reduction in the number of journalists employed in Australia. Someone would probably have to go out and count how many journalists we have lost this year or perhaps the last 15 months, but just reading the business press and the media generally it is apparent there has been a reduction in the number of journalists.

We know that the journalist pool is long lived. We have Michelle Grattan and Laurie Oakes still the doyens of the press gallery here in Canberra, so we know we have people who have been around forever. But we also know there is increasingly less opportunity for journalists to participate in the print media and if you combine that with a concentration of media ownership then perhaps there should be a place for a member of the public to take their concerns. I am not worried about politicians or the people in this chamber; we can come in here and say what we like and put out media releases until we are blue in the face—some get picked up, some do not. But the person in the street who may feel aggrieved by an unsavoury or unfavourable media report—what do they do? They can go and hire a lawyer; they can sue for defamation; they can even make a complaint to the owner of the newspaper.

If you actually support diversity and stronger self-regulation then this media legislation should be supported. We want to ensure as far as the public is concerned that they can be confident that their concerns about what is reported in the press will be taken seriously and considered independently away from newspaper proprietors. Australia has one of the most concentrated media industries in the world and the objective of this legislation is to ensure that there is no further reduction in media diversity.

Two past chairs and the current chair of the Australian Press Council told the Finkelstein inquiry there were flaws in the operation, funding and independence of the Australian Press Council. This is not the government; these are the people who run the Australian Press Council. The Australian Press Council said in its submission that publishers could withdraw at any time without adverse consequences, raising the point that publishers would not lose privacy protections if they withdrew. This is something the APC raised at the inquiry. Then you have the contribution from the former chair, Ken McKinnon. He has raised concerns about the council's independence, saying that proprietors who support the Press Council are equally interested in influencing its actions. He told the inquiry that an editor once said to him: 'If you promise not to uphold any complaints from my paper we will double our subscription, is that a deal?' How is that independence? How is that good governance?

The truth is the APC has improved but only because the government initiated the convergence and Finkelstein inquiries. If the government's proposals are not supported there will be nothing to stop the APC returning to the bad old days where its independence is compromised and publications can threaten to walk out and withdraw funding if they do not like a decision. As I have already said, as a politician I can use the media to argue my case. If I have the money I can sue for defamation or libel. But these reforms are not about politicians or people who have the means to defend themselves; they are about ensuring the public has an independent, transparent body they can go to if they have a concern about what appears in the press so it can be heard and considered appropriately. There are many occasions when an injured party, rightly or wrongly, would seek to have their concern addressed. This allows them to have it addressed.

On the public interest test, Australia does have one of the most concentrated media sectors in the world. What we do not want to see is a further reduction in media diversity. In the United States and the United Kingdom there are public interest tests applied to mergers and acquisitions of significant media assets. In Australia, two newspaper companies deliver services online and take up 80 per cent of the Australian newspaper market. In comparison, the top two newspaper companies in the US only take up 14 per cent of the market. In a more appropriately sized market, Canada, the top two newspapers take up 54 per cent of the Canadian market. In Australia we have 11 national or metro newspapers with only three owners. Even with the advent of the internet, eight out of nine of the most popular news media websites are owned or run by the traditional media outlets.

There is, as I said earlier, a concentration of information and less people testing that information because there is less advertising and there are less journalists employed. To hear Senator Sinodinos and Senator Brandis talking, this is the end of the world as we know it, the end of democracy, because there is a perceived threat to the independence of publications. I do not know any journalists who back down from writing a fair and truthful story. I do not know, and have never met, a journalist who would not write the truth as they saw it. When I see people like Piers Akerman on the Insiders program on a Sunday morning getting extremely—what should I say?—upset about this perceived threat to his world, and when I see the other three or four journalists who were contributing to that debate with not the same level of angst, I think, 'Well, he who protests too loud really isn't contributing in a fair and proper way to this debate.'

Senator Sinodinos mentioned Ireland. Some of the more hysterical commentators have been arguing that the government's support for this media self-regulation is antidemocratic. But it is quite common. Legislation in Ireland sets out the structure and coverage of the operation of the Press Council of Ireland and the press council must meet these standard if its members are to receive protection under defamation laws. Just like the legislation that the government has proposed here, the Irish press council makes its own codes of practice and complaints-handling protocols. No-one here is seriously suggesting that the Irish do not enjoy freedom of speech or that their press is not free. In fact, Ireland scores higher on the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders than Australia does. I was interested to read the views of Michael McNiffe, the editor of the News International publication the Irish Sun, on the Irish press council. He said that the Irish press council is:

… independent of the government … accessible to everyone. People won't need to go to lawyers if they feel they have a complaint about newspapers.

Here we have a respected editor from a newpaper in the Murdoch stable talking about the benefits of government supporting the important works of media self-regulation.

The contribution from the other side of the chamber today is hysterical, over the top, and not looking after the man in the street or the voter who may want to pursue a complaint against these media barons.

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Conroy, announced legislation from the government which I think is no more than an attempt by this government to limit free speech. Freedom of speech is the most fundamental right in a democracy and it is one that we must all work to preserve at all costs. Of course, Senator Conroy is no stranger to controversial legislation. He is the minister who brought us—or, rather, some of us—the NBN, the botched Australia Network tender and, in a similar vein to this legislation, the dodgy internet filter.

Under this legislation Labor is proposing wide-ranging so-called 'reforms' that will regulate the media in Australia in a manner never before seen in this country. There are two key parts to this oppressive approach to government regulation. The first is a new public interest test to determine the future of proposed media mergers. Australia already has laws to protect diversity of voices, promote competition and prevent market concentration. These laws were passed in 2002 and protect diversity of ownership and diversity of content and preserve diversity of reach.

Obviously, technology has changed since 2002 with the growth of online services, so it is effectively impossible to limit the reach of online news services as provided under the cross-media ownership rules. But of course, on the net, diversity is just a mere click away as the user can access an endless number of news services from all over the world and so is guaranteed a diversity of opinion.

The existing cross-media ownership laws provide that the percentage of the market which can be reached by any one company in various combinations of delivery platform is 75 per cent of the population, thus providing diversity of ownership in various mediums around the country. However, as I said, freedom of speech remains the key public interest test of any kind of legislation to do with the media. Licensing introduces a factor of potentially undesirable government control, which might mean that if the editorial policy of the media concerned was not considered favourable in various degrees by the government of the day, revision of content might be required. Another word for that is censorship. So why is a new opportunity for political interference in media ownership needed? And what additional protections will this legislation provide? Senator Conroy will not even provide the form of words he plans to use to explain this, much less any rational arguments for this proposal.

The second part of this government attack on free speech is a new bureaucracy, the Public Interest Media Advocate, who would be appointed by the government of the day to oversight of the Press Council. You have to ask: why is this necessary? The Press Council is doing a very good job. The government seems to have taken a particularly warped view of the recommendations of the Finkelstein review, one of which was to create a news media council.

The bills that we are considering were referred to a committee last Thursday. Although the reporting date for the committee's findings is not until June, Senator Conroy is insisting that the legislation be passed by the end of this week. It is a move that reportedly has shocked some of his fellow Labor members who apparently want a full and open debate on this legislation—surprise, surprise!

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for School Education and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Don't believe everything you read in the press!

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I do hope they do, because as representatives of the Australian people we are here to discuss all the implications of any legislation, and having it pushed through without debate is something this government has a very bad reputation for doing. So, as I said, how can this haste be considered an appropriate way to consider significant and far-reaching public policy changes? The answer is that it cannot.

Senator Jacinta Collins interjecting—

I beg your pardon?

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ignore the interjection.

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While it may not be embodied in a bill of rights, freedom of speech is the foundation upon which the many liberties we enjoy in this country are based. Freedom of association, freedom of religion and freedom of speech are all the hallmarks of a true democracy. Sadly, as I have said, freedom of speech is the very ideal this piece of legislation seeks to inhibit by threatening to impose a mechanism for government control of content on the historically free Australian media.

We can all cite examples of countries where freedom of the press and, therefore, freedom of speech is not afforded. We generally associate such societies with at least some degree of oppression where the state has undue influence and unfairly impedes the lives of its citizens. In this regard I read with interest the front-page article in the Weekend Australian last weekend. It quoted journalist Joseph Fernandez, who was the editor in chief of Malaysia's Daily Express for 14 years until 1992. Alarmingly, Mr Fernandez said that a reading of this legislation had him recalling his days as a journalist in Malaysia, where he lived under the threat of arrest and newspapers had to apply annually to have their licences renewed. Now the head of journalism at Curtin University, Mr Fernandez was quite clear in his views of these proposals, saying:

This legislation represents a raft of regulations with very serious consequences for the free exchange of ideas …

He added that parts of the legislation:

… potentially limit basic human rights to freedom of expression.

It is interesting to reflect on the fact that Australia is the only one of the five old Commonwealth countries which does not have some sort of formal legislated protection of basic freedoms including freedom of expression. The UK has the protection of the European Convention on Human Rights and the US has constitutional protection of freedom of expression, which in Canada and New Zealand is protected by a charter of rights. So, when we are faced with an attack on freedom of speech by an elected government in the form of legislation such as that which we are considering now, one has to wonder whether or not this legislation would even be up for discussion if Australia and the media had some sort of legal protection of freedom of speech, because this legislation would have run foul of that legal protection long ago.

The Gillard government has been threatening retaliation against its critics in the media for several years now. One has the feeling that perhaps this legislation might be renamed the 'News control legislation'—with a little bit of a reference to News Ltd, whose views on the Gillard government are perhaps not appreciated by the government but which are the views of cold, realistic analysis of the programs this government has sought to implement and the failure of its many policies.

In conclusion, any attempt to further regulate or circumscribe the media must be viewed with the greatest of suspicion. To paraphrase Seven West Media owner Kerry Stokes, we are sending free speech to the vet to be castrated. This legislation must be defeated or withdrawn in the interests of protecting the freedom of the press in Australia.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have come in to make a contribution to this debate and I have to say it is really, truly incredible for the opposition to suggest that the Labor Party is limiting free speech in Australia. I made this point a number of times after question time in taking note today, and yet again we have heard from the contributions this afternoon that that is exactly what the coalition are trying to say here in the chamber this afternoon. So let's ignore the hyperbole and the half-truths spread by those opposite me and focus on the actual content of the reforms the government is putting forward.

Much of the criticism that has been directed at the government has concerned the proposed changes to media ownership, and it is these changes that I want to focus on more closely. The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (News Media Diversity) Bill 2013 makes important changes to limit media concentration. It achieves this by instituting a public interest test which will be applied to mergers and acquisitions of media sources. There is no grand conspiracy. I cannot be more clear on this point. The aim is to protect media diversity and make sure there is no substantial lessening of diversity or control when it comes to media voices. Linked to this is the Public Interest Media Advocate Bill 2013. The advocate will be an independent statutory recognised officer just like the Ombudsman or the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and will be responsible for deciding whether a particular transaction involving the news media may proceed.

I am not sure the opposition have read these bills or even attempted to understand how they work. I think this is all part of their hysterical campaigns that are only too frequent in this chamber, particularly during this year. As the minister has pointed out on several occasions, the coalition's response to the proposed media reform package has been nothing short of hysterical. The reason they are opposed to this package is not any principled defence of freedom of speech. The coalition has one principle aim: to protect the media wing of the Liberal Party known to most of us as News Ltd.

The fashion in which this news organisation—in particular, the Australian newspaper—has gone after the Rudd and Gillard governments is unprecedented. The Liberal Party therefore has a vested interest in making sure that News Limited continues to dominate Australia's media landscape. Rather than engage in a sensible and mature discussion of media reforms the coalition and News Limited have lowered the tone of public debate considerably and have treated the Australian public as idiots. We all know about the Daily Telegraph's front page featuring Minister Conroy with pictures of some of the world's most famous dictators, including Stalin and Mao. Journalist Gemma Jones described the minister as 'Julia Gillard's henchman'. Then we have the CEO of the Liberal Party's media arm, Kim Williams, claiming that the government is the first, outside of wartime, to introduce government sanctioned journalism. The coverage would be amusing if it were not such a serious issue. Unfortunately for the Liberal Party and their attack dogs at News Limited, none of this is accurate. Perhaps the Liberal Party should take a closer look at the convergence review and the Finkelstein review. Matthew Ricketson, who assisted the Finkelstein inquiry, has said:

The most recent and persuasive case study showing why there is an urgent need to reform regulation of the news media has been provided by the news media itself. And it's been provided in the way they have reported on the Independent Media Inquiry. What they have done is under-report a lot of what was presented to the Independent Media Inquiry late last year, and to either misreport the inquiry's findings or to ignore large parts of the report altogether.

The reforms are necessary because of what we have learnt during these reviews: Australia's media ownership laws are in need of significant reform.

We know that, under the Howard government, the cross-media regulations were weakened considerably. Most recently, in 2007, the coalition introduced the 'two out of three' rule, which meant that companies are now allowed to own up to two media outlets—television, radio and newspaper—in a single area. This change was made in the dying days of the Howard era even though Australian media ownership is amongst the most concentrated in the world. The test we are introducing is one that allows for the public media interest advocate to block a merger if it would result in a substantial lessening of diversity. That is all it is.

This reform is necessary because the government believes that, in a democracy, a diversity of voices within the media is essential. I know those opposite do not agree with that principle, but it is one that we on this side of the chamber firmly believe in. That very principle is under serious threat in Australia. It is a simple fact that we should be alarmed about. Australians have far fewer voices to draw upon to make informed decisions about the policies and events that affect them more than almost any other place in the free world. When challenged on this point, the coalition has suggested that, since traditional media services are being challenged by new digital technologies such as blogs and the like, the concentration of mainstream media is not of real concern anymore. But the notion that mass media diversity does not matter, and that new players are threatening traditional sources, has been grossly exaggerated. One prominent blogger from the Nation, John Nichols, visited Australia several years ago and noted that, despite new content and platforms, people have never received less information and less of it from alternative sources.

Several studies to emerge from the United States, which is also struggling to maintain a diversity of media ownership, are especially revealing. One 2010 study from the Pew Centre of Journalism published a report which found that people still got most of their information from traditional media sources. An analysis of independent media, such as blogs, showed that 96 per cent of stories simply came from recycling stories found in the mainstream press. There is, of course, a very important place for independent, non-mainstream media, but we still rely substantially on traditional news sources. Many people, particularly those less adept at digital technologies, rely completely on mainstream media services and they deserve a diversity of choice just like everyone else.

Mainstream media still matters and, sadly for Australia, News Limited looms over every other media owner. As managing director of Independent Australia, David Donovan, has noted:

Australian mass media is concentrated into the hands of a very small number of proprietors. For example, 11 of the 12 major newspapers in Australia are owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation …

Donovan goes on:

… Murdoch bestrides the Australian media landscape like a colossus—NewsCorp … also dominate the regional and suburban newspaper publishing industry, as well as owning a major slice of Foxtel.

Realistically, we are not that far away from a mainstream media that is 100 per cent News Limited owned and run. What is particularly concerning is that News Limited newspapers such as the Australian have decided they are there not only to critique policy but also to dictate policy shifts and harass the government into locking step with the coalition. It does not matter what the issue is; they have an agenda and they will stick to it. Take the most important matters of the day to face Australia, such as climate change, asylum seekers, the National Broadband Network: the focus is on hounding the government, not reporting on facts. Once they decided to launch their vindictive actions against Labor there was no turning back.

One point they have also conveniently ignored is that the package we are introducing here in Australia follows similar reforms in other countries, countries where governments are concerned about media concentration and the standard of the press generally. The United Kingdom introduced laws several years ago aimed at ensuring a greater diversity of media ownership. These laws enabled the UK's Secretary of State to issue an intervention notice if they believe that a merger raises public interest concerns. We have closely studied the United Kingdom model and believe that the presence of the public interest media advocate in the Australian model represents a significant improvement. It ensures that decision making is kept at arm's length from government and streamlines the application and decision making process. This government—unlike those opposite—believes that it is essential in a democracy to have a diversity of voices within the media. We are therefore following the example of other advanced democracies that are willing to confront the problems of concentrated media.

As I said, we have looked at the United States. Their regulators, the Federal Communications Commission, assesses whether media or telecommunication mergers would potentially endanger the public interest. I also note that diversity protections have been introduced in a range of jurisdictions, including in Germany and Canada. (Time expired)

Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for this discussion has expired.