Out of the blue last week, the Minister for Communications, Senator Richard Alston, announced that the Government was prepared to consider an overhaul of the media-ownership laws. He said he was in favour of a comprehensive review of the laws which at present prohibit the owner of a newspaper to own a broadcasting licence in the same city and which restrict foreign ownership in newspapers, television and radio.
There is quite a lot wrong with the present legal regime for media ownership. It is obvious that it has failed dismally in its primary objectives of retaining Australian ownership of major media assets and of having a diversity of media ownership. For a start, one foreign citizen controls the major circulating newspaper in five Australian capitals and the leading national newspaper. For a time, another foreign citizen in effect controlled the Fairfax group, which dominates the classified advertisement market in both Sydney and Melbourne.
But this does not mean that we should applaud it Senator Alston’s new stand. The timing is appalling. It is only a couple of months before a federal election. There would not be sensible consideration of any proposals. The highly charged atmosphere just before an election is not an appropriate time for such a debate. It seems that Senator Alston’s move was a naïve attempt to curry favour with the major media owners in the hope of more favourable coverage for the Coalition during the campaign. If so, it will not work. The Coalition made a similar promise in 1996, but after attaining government did not deliver. The Government did not do enough to ensure Opposition or Democrat support for a new regime. Given the acknowledged failure of the present regime, that should not be impossible. But playing stunts like last week’s announcement is not the way to go about it.
Moreover, Senator Alston would get more support if his credentials in the communications portfolio were stronger. But he has made an utter hash of the introduction of digital television in Australia. Nine months after its supposed introduction, only a tiny number of households have it because of Senator Alston’s insistence on over-regulation, in particular, insisting that the five existing networks use the high (rather than standard) definition as the benchmark and virtually ruling out multi-channelling. He also imposed such high regulation on datacasting that no-one turned up to the auction for the spectrum.
He cannot have it both ways – seeking deregulation of media ownership rules, but keeping a tight rein on how licensees broadcast television. The only consistency is that the rules are mogul-specific. Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting wants relaxation of cross-media rules (even if it wants to keep foreign-ownership restrictions) and it wants restrictions against datacasting a multi-channelling.
If Senator Alston were genuine he would propose deregulation of ownership rules along the lines of the Productivity Commission report tabled last year. Media would have the same competition rules as other businesses, with an over-riding national-interest test when it comes to takeovers. But that test should be something more than the minister deciding what is the national interest. The test should be about anti-competitive domination of the communications market as a whole, not artificial rules about newspapers and broadcast licences. After all, the technologies are converging. Television licensees are putting out what are in effect electronic newspapers on the internet now.
Senator Alston should also change the digital television rules to allow licensees to decide what they will do with their spectrum – whether to have several standard signals or one high-definition signal, or even stay analog.
In all, last week’s effort was yet another unsatisfactory development in Australia’s sorry history of media regulation.