Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I accept that, and withdraw. It was not the Labor Party which passed a resolution at its Queensland conference which was considered to be binding on Queensland National Party members. So when it comes to who stands over people, it is quite clear in this debate what has gone on. Senator Joyce and Senator Nash signed a dissenting report, and they have talked a great fight. But it will catch up with you, Senator Joyce, because at some point someone is going to work out that the speech was great, but why on earth, after giving that speech, did you vote the other way?

We will be voting with you on the voices test, because that is at the heart of this debate. But once we are defeated, as is likely, Senator Joyce, when you then vote not to excise the cross-media laws and to allow the very voices test you say is not good enough, so that the Pussycat Dolls and the Red Hot Chili Peppers get to count the same as the Packer and the Murdoch empires, you will not be able to show people your speech.

There was a famous Labor Party person who used to come to the ALP national executive meetings and give passionate speeches against the outrages of the New South Wales Right. He would go home to Tasmania and say, ‘God, you should have heard the speech I gave.’ People would say, ‘How did you vote?’ ‘Oh no, I voted for it.’ He became a laughing stock pretty quickly. I have to tell you, Senator Joyce, that it will be hard for you to keep giving these great speeches and writing these great dissenting reports and then turn around and vote the other way. Credibility in politics is important, too. Maybe the media, because you are ultimately delivering them what they want, will not highlight it too much, but I know that the people of Queensland are pretty smart. They can smell a rat when one runs across their path, and you cannot say on the one hand that a voices test that allows the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Pussycat Dolls to counterbalance the Packers and the Murdochs is a terrible thing and then on the other hand vote for it. You actually have to stand up and be counted sometimes. What is at stake, as you said, is to ensure that no organisation ends up being more powerful than the Parliament of Australia.

The government likes to call the measures in the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2006 and related bills its ‘media reform package’. However, when you look at the measures in detail, it is clear that this label just does not fit. It is a case of misleading advertising. Sure, the bills concern the media, and there are four of them so it is a package. But the word ‘reform’ cannot be applied to what the government has put forward. I suppose this is just another application of the two out of three rule that we have heard so much about, and that apparently, according to Senator Joyce, is the saviour of democracy. The government’s media ownership bill will reduce media diversity, it will reduce competition and it will reduce consumer choice. Where is the reform in that? Where is the reform in measures that give even more power to some of the most powerful people in the country?

Let us not misunderstand Prime Minister Howard when he says, ‘I’m not really fussed about this legislation.’ Let us be clear: this is his third attempt in the last 10 years for a bill he does not care about. Let us not be fooled by the Prime Minister pretending that it is not a priority for him. As soon as the government got its way, it was going to force it through the Senate at any and all costs. The government knows that it is hard to sell increased media concentration as good public policy. The Prime Minister has twice tried before to get the parliament to swallow this bitter pill. Sensibly, these proposals were rejected. This time around he has tried a different approach. This time around he has tried to sugar-coat the plan to repeal the cross-media laws by trying to link it to new digital television services. In truth, the Senate should realise that there is no connection between the two. Australia does not need to sacrifice media diversity in order to enjoy the benefits of the digital age. This is a package that looks after the interests of media moguls, not media consumers.

Before I get to the detail of the legislation and its flaws, some comment has to be made about the process that has preceded this debate today because it says so much about the government’s attitude to media reform. The media package that we are debating today has been under development by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts for more than 12 months. Countless meetings have been held with representatives of the big media companies. The government has been very keen to come up with a package that balances their commercial interests. Regrettably, the public and the parliament have not received the benefit of a similar courtesy.

As we saw last year in the debates on the sale of Telstra and industrial relations, this is a government that pays mere lip service to notions of Senate scrutiny and public accountability. The minister dictated that the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts would have just three weeks to conduct its inquiry into the legislation. Members of the public were given just over a week to scrutinise four bills. Key elements of the government’s legislation were not even released to the public. It was not until four o’clock yesterday that we finally saw the amendments containing the rules governing the new digital channels, the so-called channels A and B. The committee hearings were a complete farce. The committee was forced to cram more than 30 witnesses into just two days of hearings.