Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on how the government is reforming Australia's media laws to embrace the challenges of the new economy? How is this reform part of the government's plan to help Australia transition to a new economy?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question and I note his powerful commitment to and advocacy for the needs of regional Australians in terms of their broadcasting services. Today, the most significant reforms to media ownership laws in a generation were presented to and approved in the party room and they will be introduced into the parliament this week. The media ownership regulations, in our law, were written before pay television. They were certainly written before the internet. They are a relic of a past media economy and they have been out of date for years. Governments have kicked the reform of these media ownership rules into the long grass for so long that they have formed part of the rich subsoil of Australian political inertia. We are taking them out. We are tackling this important microeconomic reform, and we are bringing the media ownership laws into the 21st century.

Most significantly for regional Australians, we are doing so in a way that will secure more news and more local content throughout regional Australia. The regional broadcasters, who have been constrained from merging with larger organisations and expanding their reach by the restriction—the so-called 70 per cent reach rule—have had their economic prospects constrained by that. That rule has been left in place, even though those types of territorial regulations and constraints have been rendered completely irrelevant and out of date by the internet, and everyone has known that for years and years. My government is grasping this nettle and dealing with it. This is substantial microeconomic reform. We are doing so in a way that will ensure that, when regional broadcasters do merge, as they will, their local news and local content requirements will be increased substantially in the areas where there are local content obligations today and, in the many areas where there are no local content obligations—large parts of South Australia, and Western Australia in particular—new local content and new obligations will be imposed. What we are seeing is strong microeconomic reform and deregulation, and we are freeing business up, recognising the technologies of the 21st century and, at the same time, ensuring that the honourable member's constituents, and people in regional Australia right around the country, will get a better deal from their broadcasters than ever before.