Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think I can do it in 4½ minutes. The reach rule has been a longstanding restriction in broadcasting from the late 1980s—it might have been Paul Keating; it might have been the early 1990s. We have had this rule for at least 20 years, and it has been reviewed a number of times. It is quite a blunt rule. It is unusual to have a restriction on mergers in a particular landscape of 75 per cent, or any particular number for that matter, but we have that in our broadcasting space. We do have it for a reason, and the reason is that it guarantees a diversity of broadcasters in our landscape. It means by definition that in the 25 per cent left, apart from that 75 per cent, there have to be dedicated regional broadcasters. Channels 9, 10 and 7 cannot cover the field, if you like—by law they cannot cover 100 per cent of Australia, so there have to be some regional broadcasters and that is why we have WIN, Prime and Southern Cross as well—and NBN. It is blunt, I recognise that, and almost every review that has been done since that time has recognised difficulties or issues with the reach rule. As I say, it does serve a purpose. I believe Australians want a diverse media landscape. I do believe that Australians want to have local news and local content delivered in their local area. I therefore believe that we need to have some protections in our legal framework to permit broadcasters, or the media industry more generally, to deliver that diverse landscape.

At the moment, as it stands, if the 75 per cent rule or other rules such as the two-out-of-three rule, which goes to more than just TV, were removed, a proposed merger between two broadcasting entities would be assessed by the ACCC under section 50 of the Competition and Consumer Act. That act obviously deals with matters of competition and economic efficiency, and the ACCC has to be bound by the provisions of that act when looking at any particular potential merger. I have great scepticism that any such process could adequately deal with the issues of media diversity through section 50 alone. Section 50 itself is there to protect competition, not to promote any kind of diversity or any kind of specific promotion of a minimum number of players in a market. The Trade Practices Act, or now the Competition and Consumer Act, is focused on delivering outcomes that are in the best interests of consumers, not necessarily saying that there must be a minimum number of competitors in a market, whereas I believe in the media landscape at least there is a different set of issues that need to be considered. That means that there possibly would need to be specific media rules around mergers and acquisitions.

I do note that other reviews have been done in this area, such as the Productivity Commission's broadcasting review and the convergence review a few years ago. They both called into question the 75 per cent rule, and also the two-out-of-three rule, but they also made the point that a diverse media landscape is an important objective for public policy and perhaps needs protection through other ways and means. I note that at this stage at least those who are seeking to remove that 75 per cent rule have not really put forward a specific proposal to deal with issues of media diversity apart from just the competition issues. I am sure those issues will continue to be considered and debated both here in the parliament and in the wider public policy sphere.

I fully support this bill. As I said at the start, as I am more of a rugby league fan I very much hope that Channel 9 will be able to provide the grand final in high definition. I hope that at least one Queensland team and maybe two will be in the grand final but if they are not I will still be watching, and I hope that along with millions of other Australians we can finally enjoy the pre-eminent and premier sporting event on our nation's calendar in high definition on big screen TVs.