Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, we've seen so much change. I would never reflect on your age, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, or mine, but standing up after Senator Small, one of the more recent arrivals to this place and someone who is a little younger than me, and following Senator Chandler, I will reflect that perhaps you and I saw a different telecommunications environment, particularly when we were growing up. Admittedly, I was a little tacker, but I very well remember the fights in the seventies and early eighties over just getting connected to the phone system. The battles then were over access. The battles now, and the challenges that we face as a government and as a society, are over something very different.

The mobile phones that we all carry in our pockets now have a level of connectivity that was unimaginable half a generation ago. They have access to information and news sources that was unimaginable half a generation ago. They are ubiquitous across our society in a way that was unimaginable just half a generation ago. I remember in the early nineties a group of friends and I had one of the first modems in Western Australia and, literally, there were a few bulletin boards that you could access. Today, obviously, the internet allows people, through their devices and their computers, to access news sources not just in their own backyard but right around this planet. That puts an enormous pressure on our regulatory framework. It puts an enormous pressure on society. It puts an enormous pressure on us as lawmakers to make wise choices in an environment where, quite frankly, technological change outpaces the ability of the legal system to keep up.

It is a challenge, and getting the balance right in these things means that we must always be nimble, flexible and willing to try a new approach. But, then, we must also be willing to see if it is working and, if it is not, willing to see where it is working and where it needs to be changed. I think that in this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2021, we see a willingness to embrace the need to address what is a clear and dramatic issue in the media environment. It is an environment where technological change, the platforms people use and the way people interact with the internet is also constantly changing and evolving, so we cannot stand still. As a government, we cannot pretend, and we do not pretend, that this is a one-step process where all the problems that we currently see in the news media environment will be solved by this legislation. In fact, the ministers involved—the Treasurer and the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts—understand fully that we need to look at this area constantly and we need to keep focusing on what is working and what is not working. We need to make sure that we deliver an environment in this country where we balance the needs of the commercial sector with the needs of the fourth estate to maintain a strong journalistic presence that delivers high-quality, factual, evidence based journalism to the Australian people.

People have a thirst for local news in this country. It is one of the great shames of the transition to a new, much more digital world that we've seen those small, regional media outlets—radio stations, TV stations, but, in particular, newspapers—become a severe casualty of the technological change that has washed over the world in the last generation or so. Without those local media sources, people look around at what options are available to them, and, unfortunately, we have an environment where some of the options that are available are not necessarily positive in terms of how those people interact with society, the political environment and information. We see the growth of sources of information that are, at best, dubious and we see the need for high-quality sources of information become much more dramatic.

A few people in this place have mentioned that the Economics Legislation Committee had a look at this bill. As the committee's chair, I come to the examination of an issue like this with the fundamental belief that if we can avoid regulation we should do so; that we should step in not merely because there is a problem but when there is a problem and also a way the government can solve it without overly constraining people's ability to operate in a free and open society. Very telling through that inquiry were some of the comments made by Facebook. But, before I go into that, I wish to acknowledge the other members of the committee. We've already heard from Senator Bragg and Senator McDonald, who are my colleagues on the committee, but I also want to particularly acknowledge Senator Alex Gallacher, who's the deputy chair of the committee. Alex always comes at these issues with a very fair perspective and a very open and inquiring mind. Senator Jenny McAllister and Senator Rex Patrick are also on the committee.

One of the things that really stood out the day we heard from Google and Facebook was Facebook's answer to a question from my colleague Senator Bragg. He basically asked them what high-quality, objective, independent Australian news was worth to them. The answer was: well, not very much. That was a shocking answer on a number of counts. It's shocking on the surface but it's also shocking because Facebook, at the same time as saying that, had done deals with media companies to pay them for content. So on the one hand Facebook were saying that high-quality content had no commercial value to them but on the other hand they were paying for the same content. That's a circle that doesn't square.

We've got a situation where the environment in which news media is operating has changed very dramatically. As I said, when we were both younger men, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, the newspapers were an inch thick. The classified sections were half the paper, and they delivered the proverbial rivers of gold to the large media organisations. I remember the West Australian was literally an inch thick some Saturdays, with a huge classified section—20 or 30 different pull-out advertising materials, plus the copy adverts. That funded a lot of public interest journalism right around this country at a very granular local level, in cities like Bunbury, where Senator Small comes from, right across the regional areas of Australia. In the large cities, obviously, classified advertising provided a really significant source of revenue to provide the copy that drove sales in those papers, keeping people informed of the events of the day. As those classifieds disappeared, as they went online in a variety of different forms and the advertising drifted away—as Senator Small so rightly commented, now 81 per cent of digital advertising goes to those two large companies we're talking about today—we had a gutting of public interest journalism and a significant diminution of the ability of on-the-ground media providers to continue. Not all of that can be addressed through a bill such as this. It doesn't pretend to address all those issues. Many of those issues are structural issues which, in a fundamental way, can never be addressed. It's difficult to conceive of an environment where all those many hundreds or thousands of regional newspapers will ever exist again in the way they did before. That's not to say they cannot be replaced by something else. In fact, many of them have been replaced by online services of one form or another in those towns, perhaps not running exactly what the newspapers provided but certainly providing a source of news and up-to-date information on local events.

In that frame, we have these very large media companies having an extraordinarily dominant position, and the government, through the work of the ACCC, has developed this mandatory code to address the massive bargaining power imbalance which exists between the digital news platforms and Australian news businesses. As we continue to obtain more and more of our news online, we have to give those news media outlets a way of grappling with the need to find those viable and sustainable business models for the provision of that journalism which is so fundamental to a free and open and democratic society. I think the digital platforms themselves would acknowledge that they are thriving and have an extraordinarily central place within the new digital environment that we're all operating in. These behemoths that have such influence, such control over that digital advertising revenue, earn revenue from the content that's created by the media companies in Australia. This code of conduct is a way of allowing Australian news media businesses to be fairly remunerated for the provision of those services. Again, this all comes back to this massive imbalance of bargaining power.

As I've said, my preference would be for as little regulation as possible, and that is why I am extraordinarily pleased that we are seeing so many deals being commenced and concluded outside the code. I think it is very important that, where a commercial deal can be struck between two players in a free market environment, it is struck as soon as possible and with the least regulatory impost as possible. This was always part of the fundamental design of the code and a really important part of the design of the code, and I certainly acknowledge the work of Minister Fletcher and Treasurer Frydenberg. It is very important that, in line with our principles and the way we approach these issues, those agreements outside the code have standing in their own commercial right. They do not need to reference the code and they do not need to be within the code to still exist.

I think it's very important that we listen to the media companies going forward, but we must also listen to Google and Facebook and the other large digital players going forward. As the committee recommended, and as the government had already acknowledged, this is a complex area of law which does need to be examined on an ongoing basis, and we have the review in 12 months time. It is important that we look to see how the digital environment evolves over the next 12 months. I think it is very fair to say, as Senator Small and many others who have made a contribution in this place today and yesterday have acknowledged, the eyes of the world are on us as we do this. We want to, as a government, get this right. We want to be a demonstration to the rest of the world as to how they can get this right.