Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Hansard source

There wouldn't be a parliamentarian who loves newspapers more than I do. I can say that with some justification because I recently converted one side of my double garage at home into bookshelves to hold the latest lot of bound newspapers of the Daily Advertiser from Wagga Wagga—a publication I once edited, between 1991 and 2002, and a publication for which I worked for 21 years, between 1981 and 2002. I've dedicated part of my home to bound editions of said publication. Thankfully, my wife, Catherine, allowed me to do that. They are a very good resource, and they are a very good resource because they tell the history of not just Wagga Wagga but the Riverina over the past six decades or more. I refer to them often.

I am saddened by the way the newspaper industry has gone in recent years. So many print editions have fallen by the wayside. I understand and recognise that the ways and means people get their news have changed, and newspapers are not charity: they cannot keep printing editions that are not being read when so many people, once avid print newspaper readers, are now going online for their daily news dissemination. That said, the News Journalism Payments Bill 2026 and related bills are important. They build on what the coalition did in government to help the newspaper industry, particularly through funding journalists in regional areas.

It does worry me that many of those journalists in regional areas do not receive the training they once did because, even if papers do have them, there are just not the older journalists or subeditors who were once on those newspapers. I recall when I was on the Daily Advertiser, when I edited the Daily Advertiser, our print deadline was two o'clock in the morning. Our first journalists were on board very early in the morning, so we had journalists on almost every hour of every day. I still recall phoning in from a telephone box with a story about a Temora fire at about four o'clock in the morning and arriving back in Wagga Wagga at five o'clock in the morning as the printed edition was coming off the local press, housed in the Daily Advertiser building at 48 Trail Street.

Those days are gone. The Daily Advertiser is now printed interstate at Wodonga. The editor, acting editor Xavier Mardling, as I understand, lives in the same locality. The paper is printed interstate, the editor lives interstate, and many of the views come from this town, in fact—from the Canberra Times, academics and other people in Canberra. It is not the local paper it once was, and more is the pity. The Daily Advertiser has not hired as many general local news journalists as would be expected for a paper of its size and history—and it goes back to 1868. Again, it's such a shame. Once upon a time, you'd get a good local person, they'd go through a cadetship, you'd train them and they would stay at that paper. These days many of the journalists come from capital cities—Sydney and Melbourne, in the Daily Advertiser's case—and cut their teeth, and they then leave, some after only a few months, seeking fortune and fame in capital city newsrooms. It's such a shame. You don't get that continuity. You don't get that good local knowledge.

That's not to say that the Daily Advertiser isn't a good newspaper. It's still publishing six days a week, Monday through to Saturday. And whilst it doesn't carry the line that it used to from John Milton, that 1600s English writer—'This is true liberty, when freeborn men, having to advise the public, may speak free'—it still campaigns on local issues, with homelessness being one of them at the moment. It still keeps people to account, including me, and that's a good thing. Certainly, as Voltaire said—and I'm paraphrasing, of course—I mightn't like what they say, but I'll defend, to the death, their right to say it. It's as true today as it was when he said it all those centuries ago. I am pleased that the Daily Advertiser is still publishing a daily newspaper, because it is important.

I want to praise somebody in the newspaper game whom I have great respect for, and that is Hartley Higgins. I contacted him tonight in relation to this bill. His Provincial Press Group publishes, amongst others: the Cowra Guardian, which was established in 1903; the Grenfell Record, 1866; Young Witness, 1864; Boorowa News, 1874; Harden Murrumburrah Express,1947; Tumut and Adelong Times, 1860; Tumbarumba Times, 1904; the Gundagai Independent, 1898; the Temora Independent, 1887; and the Narrandera Argus, 1880. These publications are all in the Riverina or close to it, and they are still providing the parish-pump news that people respect, know, regard and want.

And it's not just births, deaths and marriages; it's all the local information. And that is the shame about the bigger regional papers now owned by ACM—Australian Community Media, Antony Catalano's organisation—because I think sometimes those larger newspapers have drifted away from the real local content that made them such a must-read every morning. Whilst the Daily Advertiser and the Border Mail are still publishing sport, general news and the like, in recent years we have noticed a decline in the number of avid and ardent readers of those publications. As I said, I'm so pleased that they are still publishing. Long may that continue. I'll do everything I can to make sure they continue to exist, and I support their initiatives as part of being an advocacy group to lobby the government for a better deal, certainly regarding the right of their journalists and their publications with the metadata and with the payments of the stories that they own, that local content that they have produced and that the ACM group has spent money providing. It should not just be lifted and utilised elsewhere without a down payment, without suitable recompense.

In Hartley Higgins's correspondence with me tonight, he said:

We have never known business so tough, not just as publishers but as small to medium businesses (SMEs); it seems that governments of all colours—

and I'm reading it as he said it—

don't fully understand SME's plight of falling revenues yet confronted by rising costs and wages, and benefits.

I would say to Hartley that indeed, in that respect, I certainly know how hard they're feeling it. I am a former small-business owner, I am a former newspaper editor and I very much understand that. He went on to say:

CPA—

the Country Press Association—

which represents 240 publisher members, has worked tirelessly for the last three years presenting to government (ministers and departments) to promote not only country newspapers but the future of regional journalism, with ethics and standards.

Having succeeded in convincing the government of the need and application of the News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) legislation, it's now become evident that organisations who are not committed to, or in some cases not capable of producing public interest journalism, have joined a throng of potential participants in the scheme, if it's successful.

He went on to talk about strong in-principle support from the organisations behind it. He also talked about the risk of changes that undermine core objectives and the like. He's worried, as well he might be and as newspaper publishers are. They're worried because they are not just contributors to the media market. They are very much part of the fabric of those country communities, particularly those in the regions. Capital cities will always have theDaily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, the Advertiser in Adelaide and the like. They will go on. But it's the little newspapers in communities that are big enough to provide a good cup of coffee yet small enough to still care that are still a vital component of the day-to-day life. Local print adds to the flavour of local life, it reports on the news, and it's trusted. And that applies to the Daily Advertiser in Wagga Wagga and to all of those other publications I mentioned.

We saw in Queensland some time ago, during COVID, that so many of those publications just went by the wayside. Those communities are not the same because they don't have their local print newspaper, whether on a daily, a tri-weekly or a bi-weekly basis. Some of them have been replaced or supplanted by free throwaways, but those are not the same as a paid publication with journalists who may have done their journalism training in a far-off city, in a metropolitan area, or who may be locals doing a cadetship.

I implore those country editors—the ones who actually have a say and are not just being told what to do from on high, perhaps from a conglomerate in a far-off capital city—to look at employing young local people, even school leavers, because they can add potential to your organisation. If you can give them the training and guide them, they will produce the results. And your publications will have so much more respect. The Temoras, the Gundagais and the Narranderas of the world are endeavouring to do that. I have to give credit to Hartley Higgins and his organisation, PPG, because they are endeavouring to train the next generation of journalists. Hartley has probably forgotten more about newspapers than most people will ever know. He's somebody I respect, he's somebody I will listen to and he's somebody whose publications are worth advertising in.

And advertising is also a vital component. These newspapers are competing in a media market that has never been like this before. So many people these days choose to advertise online, and it's taking away some of that component that was once only the domain of print journalism, print newspapers. We need to acknowledge that, and we also need to acknowledge that government—at federal, state and local level—should do everything it can to advertise in these local print newspapers because you never know the value of something until you lose it. That's certainly the case with newspapers.

When you're doing research—dare I say 'family trees'?—and looking to authors who are writing history books, particularly local history books and histories of local sporting clubs, the only place that you can go to for reference for that material is your local newspaper. That's why Trove is such a well-resourced thing, and that's why it needs funding too so that it can get more of those country newspapers into digital form so that people can read them online. If we lose those papers, good luck trying to find that information. Good luck trying to find it in the future when a company that perhaps goes online stays online and then falls apart. It'll go offline and nobody will ever be able to retrieve that information.

So legislation is important. It is also vital that, to enhance the legislation, we adopt the amendments put forward by the shadow communications minister. But I say again: please, we need to help our newspapers in every which way. If you can buy a local newspaper and read it, you never know what you might find in it, and if we lose them, we'll be much the poorer as a society and as country communities.

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