On the tenth anniversary of the Howard Government, the subject of media reform is still on the agenda.
After two serious attempts at media ownership reform early in his term of office, and several attempts at minor tweaking, Prime Minister John Howard took the issue off the agenda because he was not willing to “expend political capital” on it, nor to “die in a ditch” over a no-win reform agenda.
Communications Minister Coonan this week foreshadowed that her department is almost finished crafting the latest draft bill on media reform and is expecting to introduce it into parliament as soon as possible. Now that the Howard Government has control of the Senate, the media reform agenda may finally be completed.
While media ownership legislation has waxed and waned over the past 10 years, other important changes have been pursued by the Howard Government in step by step small changes.
The government allowed substantial regional radio aggregation and amalgamation and also merged the ACA and ABA to form ACMA. It also succumbed to pressure for a regional radio enquiry in its early years, which was largely discredited when it was revealed that the original complaints that prompted the enquiry were bogus.
The Sedition laws and their potential effect on media reporting has also been a hot issue centering around control of media content. Occassional skirmishes with the ABC over funding and content have also provided entertaining spectacles in an attempt to distract the ABC from too much analysis of the government at times during the PM’s ten years in office.
Digital radio and digital television have also been two significant achievements of Howard’s term in office.
Speaking on Radio National’s Media Report this week, Tom Burton told presenter Gerald Tooth about the changes to reporting parliament during the Howard years:
“I think in terms of day-to-day journalism, any journalist in the Canberra press gallery will tell you it’s a lot more controlled than it used to be, it’s much more directed. That trend had been going on probably for ten years before with the Labor government, but it is a much more controlled and tightly managed process.”
Helen Coonan also spoke to Tooth about the latest attempts at media reform but refused to commit to a firm date for the introduction of legislation:
Coonan: Well if I can just suggest there that it was certainly a fully developed policy, because it was reflected in a piece of legislation that was actually debated and defeated in the Senate. What I’ve been doing is looking at, against the background of a very different media landscape, looking at what would be necessary to really free up the sector and what I’m looking at of course is to make sure that we will maintain diversity in the regulated platforms, because that’s obviously in consumers’ interests, but I don’t think we should be so afraid of some possible consolidation, because now you can get diversity from so many other sources, and it’s not just, when you look at the internet, it’s not just the existing media outlets, I mean you can access media from almost anywhere in the world, and the other important thing is that what I’ve been talking about is I think a very sensible floor under which the number of media layers can’t fall, and also to have an additional safeguard, consumer safeguard, that the ACCC will also look at issues to do with competition, which would be an additional hurdle for existing players to jump through if the kind of proposals that I’ve been talking about publicly, come to fruition.
But I think it’s only part of looking after consumers because I think that a critical part of it is also to get new and diverse services from new players which is what I’ve been talking about in taking advantage of the existing spectrum that we can now allocate for new services.
Tooth: When will we see the policy, Minister?
Coonan: Well it’s very well developed in terms of the government’s thinking, and of course it’s well known that I’ve had discussions with industry players now for some time to make sure that the direction that I’m pushing it in is something that will be able to be implemented, and I shortly propose that there’ll be the release of a paper that will gather together all of these diverse parts of a proper media strategy going forward to give the public a go at what they think. So there’ll be a period of public consultation very soon, and then the government will be in a position to put in place the changes.
Tooth: Next week? The week after? Tomorrow?
Coonan: It’s very close, it’ll be released when it’s ready, and it’s very close.
To hear this week’s Media Report click below.