Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The two-out-of-three rule is what I will be talking mostly about in regard to this bill. That is the only element of this bill that Labor has a real problem with. The two-out-of-three rule is not perfect and it is not elegant, but it is better than nothing.

The two-out-of-three rule exists to protect Australians from a media landscape that is totally dominated by a tiny handful of very wealthy and very powerful corporate owners. Australia already has a media market that is the fourth most concentrated in the world—a list that has China at the top because of complete state ownership. Maybe I am a bit radical, but I do not see much difference in a media market totally dominated by a state owner as opposed to a media market totally dominated by a private owner. I think they both have the same sorts of problems.

Removing the two-out-of-three rule will concentrate Australia's media assets in even fewer hands. We have existing owners demanding that they be allowed to buy each other out so that they can get bigger, which they say is necessary to better compete on the world stage. We have a scenario where already-massive media companies want to get even bigger so that they can face-off against similarly giant companies overseas. Such a scenario only has one outcome: the swallowing up, buying out and merging of competitors until, ultimately, only two global entities are left facing off against each other—and, one day, they themselves will ultimately want to merge. That is not a future that we should look forward to.

For our democracy to function properly, we need robust, independent and diverse voices that speak truth to power. In recent decades, we have seen a convergence of media that results not in speaking truth to power but in truth being manufactured by power. In Australia, Murdoch-owned titles account for nearly two-thirds, or 64.2 per cent, of metropolitan circulation newspapers; Fairfax-owned papers account for a further quarter, or 26.4 per cent. Some of these figures may be a little out of date. News Corporation and Fairfax, along with West Australian Newspapers, work together to create Australian Associated Press. Now, Australian Associated Press—the little AAP that you often see at the end of articles—distributes the news and then sells it onto other outlets, such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. So although much of the everyday mainstream news is drawn from AAP, all the privately-owned media outlets still compete with each other for that news The same players are creating the same news.

Rural and regional media, which is where my electorate is interested, is dominated by Rural Press Ltd, with significant holdings in all states and territories. Rural Press received a takeover offer from Fairfax in late 2006, and their merger was in 2007. The same arguments were being used back then: we need to get bigger and bigger and bigger to be able to compete. And we are still having those same arguments now.

In Australia, News Corporation, which is a United States company—it is a foreign-owned company—owns approximately 142 daily, Sunday, weekly, biweekly, triweekly newspapers. Some of them are free commuter papers. There are 102 suburban publications, which is my background. My background is as a newspaper editor for an independent title back in Western Australia, and our main competitor was News Corporation. And it is no fun, let me tell you, being an editor of an independent newspaper competing against a newspaper owned by a multinational. News Corp Australia publishes a nationally distributed newspaper in Australia, which is The Australian, and has a metro paper in each of the Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin. It used to have a Sunday title in Western Australia but, of course, that has been bought out and merged with The West Australian, and it has a group of suburban newspapers across most of the capital cities.

News Corporation is not just a newspaper company; it publishes a further 30 magazine titles across Australia. It also has interests in digital media, news.com.au, one of the biggest news sites in the country; Business Spectator and Eureka Report, kidspot.com.au, taste.com.au and homelife.com.au. It has 50 per cent stakes in careerone.com.au and CarsGuide. It has a share in the real estate website, realestate.com.au. So not only is it a media company; it also has commercial interests outside media.

One of the issues with that is that when you are a media company and you own assets that are not media related, inherent conflicts of interest arise. Suddenly, the journalists are expected to report fairly and objectively on issues of commercial interest to their corporate owner. I think it is fair to say, when we have seen on the TV news, the cross-publication, the cross-promotion of commercial interests—we will see on a commercial broadcaster's news a story about something that relates to the commercial interests of the same company—that is not news; that is advertising. How can a journalist for a media company be expected to report fairly and accurately and objectively on an issue of commercial interest to their owner if it is of adverse interest to their owner?

Until the formation of News Corporation in 1979, News Limited, as it was known then, was the principal holding company for the business interests of Rupert Murdoch, who is now an American citizen. So what we are seeing is News Corporation, Fairfax and other media entities keen to merge. These corporations have already merged over the years; they are keen to merge further. Despite their previous mergers, they want to get bigger.

While I doubt that any owner these days, as they used to be, is on the phone to personally direct a certain editorial line—I know that is the sort of romantic notion that Rupert Murdoch is on the end of the phone down to the editors telling them what to write; I know that does not happen—but woe betide the editor or news director who runs an editorial agenda that is in conflict with the owner corporation's commercial objectives.

Is it any wonder as media platforms are being swallowed up by conglomerates that the editorial voice from those platforms increasingly reflect, not the values of the middle class from whence owners once came from, because when media companies and newspapers and radio stations were locally owned by local owners, those local owners were just normal people living amongst the community?

Instead, as media companies are owned by billionaires and multimillionaire CEOs, the views expressed in those conglomerates now mirror the interests of the one per cent—that is, the multimillionaires, the property speculators, the mining magnates, the industrialists—who the owners of these platforms consider their peers. In fact, in some cases, the billionaires and mining magnates sit on the boards of these companies and take ownership stakes in them. You have to wonder why a mining magnate would be so desperate to take an ownership stake in a television company.

Labor wants media assets in more hands not fewer. We want more voice not less. We want a diversity of opinion that reflects the plurality of our country not what reflects the view of a tiny but very wealthy—and elite and powerful—handful of owners. Labor does accept that the media landscape is rapidly changing. We do not have our heads stuck in the sand. Legislation does need to keep up with technology and new entrants, such as global digital competition and social media. Labor is supporting all but one of the measures in this bill, and we do not support the repeal of the two-out-of-three rule.

The two-out-of-three rule simply means that an owner cannot own any more than two media assets in a marketplace. It is designed to ensure that any one owner cannot completely dominate a particular market's media environment. Complete domination of the media environment is in no-one's interest except the owner of the media asset. The two-out-of-three rule is not a perfect rule but it is better than nothing—which is what the government would have us vote for. We do not need nothing there, we need something to protect the community interest.

Labor supports most of the measures in this bill, other than the two-out-of-three rule, because they are Labor's measures. For four years this government has done nothing on media reform and now it seeks to shamelessly plagiarise Labor's work and pass it off as its own. It was Labor that led the way on reforming broadcast licence fee relief, gambling advertising restrictions and funding to support the broadcasting of women's sport.

This bill is before the parliament today only because the minister, cynically, spied an opportunity with the Ten Network going into voluntary administration last week. He thought that he could box Labor in, that he could somehow use Ten's predicament to weave together an argument about the urgency of removing the two-out-of-three rule. Of all the reasons Ten gave for going into administration, ownership rules was not one of them—but licence with fee relief was. It was a Labor initiative, that this bill takes up and which Labor is supporting. In a statement to the market, Ten said:

TEN anticipates that after the changes to regulations anticipated to be tabled in Parliament tomorrow pass through the Parliamentary process, the reduction in licence costs for TEN in FY17 will be in the order of $22 million and, in FY18, $12 million.

Ten itself has stated that licence fee relief is important, but nowhere in its statements to the market has it said it needs a change in the ownership rules. Everyone knows that Ten has struggled for years against the Nine Network and the Ten Network. Their commercial situation has been compounded by the entry of digital channels, which have stuck their tongues into a finite pool of advertising dollars.

If the new digital players in Australia were offering robust and well-resourced journalism, we possibly would not be so steadfast about the two-out-of-three rule. The fact is, the new digital entrants, including the second and third free-to-air channels by the existing players, offer lots of content, but little if any of it is journalism—with the exception, of course, of ABC News 24.

Journalism is why Labor is so strong on the two-out-of-three rule. We all talk about the media industry but it is the journalism that we care deeply about. Journalism is a bedrock of our democracy and we need robust and independent journalism. When we have less of it and fewer voices, our democracy is worse off—

Mr Josh Wilson interjecting—

And running down by public broadcasters, my colleague the member for Fremantle mentions. Labor has long supported licence fee relief. In government Labor provided licence fee relief on local content production in recognition of the impact of the global financial crisis, known as the global recession overseas. Those on the other side still manage to suffer from a collective amnesia on just how brutal the global recession was on the world economy, and they refuse to acknowledge that Labor's superior economic management, under my colleague the member for Lilley, during that time helped save this country from the brutal effects of that world recession. The relief that Labor offered at that time was also an acknowledgement of the increasing role of digital.

Labor supported licence fee reduction in last year's budget. The abolition of commercial broadcast licence fees recognises that the Australian media market has changed significantly since broadcasting licence fees were first introduced, with online and on-demand content fragmenting the market for media services and increasing competition for advertising. The government states this financial relief will enable broadcasters to better compete with online competitors, invest in their businesses and produce Australian content. This proposal has merit, and Labor proffered these arguments in favour of relief in 2016.

Labor notes that these changes are occurring in the context of the broader spectrum reform process, where the Department of Communications and the Arts and ACMA are working to implement the recommendations of the spectrum review over coming years, including the wholesale rewrite of the Radiocommunications Act. Further, the related tax bill introduces a new spectrum tax, estimated to raise around $40 million per annum, which ensures the Commonwealth gets a return on the use of radiofrequency spectrum. Given that a minority of broadcast licensees will be worse off under the new spectrum tax, there is also a five-year transitional support package.

We on this side of the House hold strong and consistent views on how this bill can and should move forward, and it is such a shame that the government has taken a ham-fisted approach to reform. Our shadow minister for communications tried time and again to get up-to-date briefings from the minister, but to no avail. We know he is a minister from the other place, but surely that is no excuse in itself for the gross incompetence on display. We tried last year, if the House remembers, to support the repeal of the 75 per cent reach rule. We extended the hand of bipartisanship. But, to the dismay of industry and the dismay of Labor, the minister squibbed it, and the bill was pulled from the parliamentary agenda. It is back with us now only because the minister has spied a cynical opportunity to use Ten's misfortunes as a fig leaf for ramming through the abolition of the two-out-of-three rule. Labor will support this bill, but we will not support the repeal of the two-out-of-three rule.

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