Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Oh well, if you think that is the truth, then so be it. If you want to stand by the right of media organisations in this country to misrepresent citizens and to stand up for vested interests instead of the ordinary rights of citizens to have their privacy protected, then so be it. That seems to be the line in the sand that you have drawn, because we know that this debate is not about free speech, as those opposite would like to mislead the country; it is actually about them lining up with vested interests and media alignments.

The opposition not only misrepresented Minister Carr in their questions today; they are also doing a great discredit to what is an important need for reform in this country. There is no doubt that we need reform of media laws in this country because they are not working. They are simply not working and the Finkelstein report put that very, very firmly on the agenda. It is not doing justice to Australia's citizens.

Just today we have seen the United Kingdom go much further than Australia is proposing to go. We have seen good conservative government in the UK standing up for good citizens—people like the McCanns—who were terribly misrepresented. I can tell you that there are Australians who are misrepresented by Australian media and they deserve good process for the handling of complaints. Free speech is about standing up for diverse media voices in this country. You cannot have freedom of the press in this country if the media voices in this nation continue to consolidate in their ownership patterns. That spells trouble for free press and freedom of speech in this country.

Australia already has a highly consolidated media market, much more consolidated than comparable countries which value free press. This is an issue of critical concern. It is of critical concern so that we can have freedom of speech, freedom of press and a diversity of voices in this country. How can you have free speech without a diversity of voices? If we have media outlets that own two of the local TV stations and the daily newspaper, what of that kind of environment? What does that spell for free speech? I tell you: in my book, it spells disaster for free speech.

These media laws are also about free Australian voices. It is about getting our media outlets and our TV stations to deliver Australian content. The media are asking for the capacity to broadcast, for example, across the whole footprint of this country. Senator McKenzie's question went to this point, saying that we already have media diversity, because they are a threat to the local media voices. But if you listen to what citizens in this country actually want, you will hear that they want more content, they want access to the same content that the rest of the country has access to, they want to keep their local TV stations and they want to keep their local news. What is so unreasonable about that? There is nothing unreasonable about it. In this digital day and age where we are delivering more content via things like the NBN, we should be able to give our citizens the best of both worlds when we are delivering that content to them.

We also need a system that handles complaints properly. I feel very, very strongly about this. Why? Because people's reputations can be trashed on the front page of the paper. You will go through a long and complex complaints process, by which time your reputation has been damaged, only to find the apology is printed many, many, many pages back and many months later. There has to be a quicker turnaround than this. (Time expired)