ABC 891

SUBJECTS: Labor’s Media Reforms

E&OE……… 

Journalist: …also manages opposition business in the House, good Morning Christopher Pyne.

Hon Christopher Pyne MP: Good morning gentlemen.

Journalist: Now Mark Butler, do we need approval before doing this session with you? Should we be ringing Stephen Conroy?

Hon Mark Butler MP: No, this is a very modest package of reforms of the media that we’ve announced yesterday. I mean obviously the media is going through a period of extraordinary change and I think everyone would agree, well you would think that everyone would agree that it’s important that we ensure that our laws regulating the media keep pace with that change. We’ve got a lot of advice over the last couple of years; including through a couple of Inquires and very regular free advice from existing media owners about what we should do and we’ve decided to go frankly with a very light touch I think.

Journalist: You’re effectively ignoring all of the advice aren’t you?

Butler: Well, I guess a significant piece of advice we got was to introduce a government regulator of media quality and we’ve not gone with that – we’ve decided instead to continue with the system of self-regulation. But we have said…..

Journalist: Which will be regulated?

Butler: Well we have said as we do with a number of other areas of self-regulation that I’ve been a part of, we have said that that self-regulation must at least comply with some minimum standards.

Journalist: Is this a model?

Journalist: A Public Interest Media Advocate?

Butler: The Public Interest Media Advocate will, will ensure that that happens and then Public Interest Media Advocate will also monitor future mergers and acquisitions to ensure that if they are to occur, they don’t result in a substantial decrease in media diversity.

Journalist: And will, will that advocate the public interest media advocate get down to the level as existing authority does at the moment of deciding what questions are and are not appropriate in certain interviews?

Butler: Well, no. Not that I’m aware of. I think essentially what the Advocate will be looking at is whether there is going to be a decrease or a reduction in media diversity in markets. This is one of the key objectives I think government and the community should keep their eye on in media policy. That there is diversity of media news and current affairs voices; also that there is good local content and we’ve made some changes yesterday about that to ensure that the local content rules apply to the commercial TV mutli-channels that they now operate. And that there is a system of quality, which like I’ve said we’ve decided would continue to be self-regulated.

Journalist: But, they are two quite separate issues aren’t they? One is the structure of the media, the piece that you’ve created or allowed to exist and then you get that at a micro-level of what’s actually broadcast or printed. And will this new body that will sit above the press council, will it be that the final arbiter of that micro-level?

Butler: Well it’s not going to go through line by line the editorial content of media voices, at least as far as I understand. Its brief will be to ensure that there continues to be a diversity of media voices. I mean ours is a country of a size where there is always the danger, I think of over-concentration of media voices, so it’s been a long standing policy of different governments to have a light touch regulation in place to ensure that there continues to be a diversity of media voices in the private sector.

Journalist: Christopher Pyne, what’s wrong with that? Do you agree this is a light touch?

Pyne: Well, gentlemen I don’t agree that it’s a light touch. I do think the current laws that regulate media ownership are appropriate and also, I think the current laws that regulate freedom speech are appropriate. Labor is doing two things with these laws. Firstly, they have wanted for a long time to get more control over the press by the media ownership, and secondly they want another distraction from their constant internal naval-gating. Now they are calling this new media law the Public Interest Media Advocate, which reminds me very much of the French Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety. It sounds like a very lovely name, but the truth is if the government, through its regulator which is the public interest media advocate gets to control media ownership in Australia. If a news outlet is publishing material the government at the day doesn’t like, you know exactly what the regulator will do, if that media outlet seeks to change ownership structure or purchase another media outlet or sell part of its own media empire. So this is the government power of the media that it has not had in Australia. It is a very dangerous step and it’s been rushed through the Parliament. This is such an important change; they want to get it through in five days!

Journalist: But in what way is this giving more power to the Government? That it hasn’t had in the past?

Pyne: Well the current laws have been in place for a couple of decades. They’ve worked very well in Australia. We have a very free press, I don’t always like it, I’m sure Mark Butler doesn’t always like it.

Journalist: But you do have, we do have a press in Australia where the ownership has become increasingly concentrated. Do you agree?

Pyne: Well no I think that is a bit of a myth actually.  I mean there are a plethora of different stables in the press, whether it is radio or television or the news print.  And that has been good for our country.  Nobody would suggest that Australia has a closed press.  We are a very free and open society and yet the Government hasn’t liked a lot of the press it has received because it has been a very poor Government and it has been criticised by the media.  And this is their way of saying you either do what we want you to do or we’ll start to close you down, we’ll start to control who can purchase you, what you can sell and as you said in your introduction of course they will be the arbiters of complaints against the media.  So they will have a lot of power over what the media write.

Presenter: Mark Butler, why is the Government taking on this fight?  You know, tactically, this one you could do without in your quieter moments.

Butler: Well look there are plenty of policy issues that are difficult and if you were a lazy Government you could just agree to kick down the road but this is an important issue that I think not just us in Government, or us in Parliament, have been discussing for a couple of years now but people in the community want to know that their media regulation is keeping pace with the extraordinary pace of change in the media sector generally. So we’ve had these debates, we’ve had these Inquiries.

 

Presenter: And yet internet giants like Google are going to be exempt.  Is that correct?

Pyne: That’s right.

Butler: Well look…

Pyne:  How does that work?

Presenter: When you talk about the pace of change – and Chris Pyne I am able to do these without help, thank you.

Pyne: Sorry.

Presenter: Mark Butler, when you talk about the incredible pace of change, the biggest change in the media landscape has been the forums such as Twitter and the use of the internet as a news source and the aggregation of news through outlets such as Google for instance.  And yet they’re going to be exempt?

Butler: Well that is right; the internet is probably the most significant change to our media.

Presenter: And that’s going to be exempt?

Butler: Well the internet is not because the significant players in traditional print media are the big players in internet based news services.

Presenter: No they’re not.

Butler: They are.  There is ABC Online which has been incorporated into the Charter and the changes that we discussed or released yesterday, there is Fairfax News, there’s News Ltd news.

Presenter: But Mark Butler as you know, for instance, Twitter is an incredibly diverse and fast news source now.  Most journalists bounce off or break their stories on Twitter well before they are on their own websites and well before they are in their newspapers or radio or TV news bulletins.

Butler: Absolutely, but they’re generally a path to different news services.  I mean Twitter only has 140 characters – you don’t get much analysis in that as much as people try.  Generally, what happens is…

Presenter: How long is the average grab on a TV news service?

Butler: Well I don’t know in characters.  Longer than 140 characters.

Presenter: You think so?

Butler: Twitter tends to direct you to other sources of news which tend still to be dominated by News Ltd, by Fairfax, by ABC Online and players like that.  So I mean yes there is a different medium that is changing the way in which people access their news but the traditional mouthpieces continue largely to be the same mouthpieces.

Presenter: Who gets to appoint the regulator?

Butler: Well the Public Interest Media Advocate we’ve said will be an independent position appointed for up to five years appointed by the Minister after consultation with the Opposition.  So it is essentially adopting the model that we have in place, and have had in place for many years, for the Chairman of the ABC position.

Presenter: Ok.

Pyne: Can I pick Mark Butler up on a couple of issues?

Presenter: Yes.

Pyne: Firstly, Mark Butler said that this is an issue that we’ve been talking about for some time.  Well who?  Who’s been talking about it for quite some time?

Presenter: Well the Government has been. Chris Pyne, the Government have been.

Pyne: Well the Government has been but the public haven’t been.  I mean I have not had one person in my Electorate Office ever or any, at Firle Supermarket or anywhere else – no punter has ever come up to me and said the most important thing the Government has to do is re-regulate the media.

Presenter: But you’d also say that no one at the Firle Supermarket has ever said that Tony Abbott is sexist.

Pyne: Well I’ll tell you that the only people who are talking in Canberra about the need to regulate the media and put more controls over the press are the Labor Party.  Not the general public.  Not the Coalition.  So there are, there is not an issue here that the Government is addressing and if you read the newspapers more…

Presenter: I mean, frankly, we’re getting a bit worried about the Firle supermarket Chris Pyne!  Whether it’s… (Inaudible).

Butler: I get it raised with me at street corner meetings all the time.

Pyne: But that’s because you raise it first.  So you go to street corner meetings and the first thing on the list is what we need is a Public Interest Media Advocate.  Well I mean that is ridiculous.  We know that is not true.  We know that Labor has been wanting to attack News Ltd for some time.  The Prime Minister has been threatening News Ltd through the newspapers for some time and this is the answer.  In the last six months of the Government they want in five days to rush through draconian new media laws and the Coalition will not roll over and just allow it to happen.

Presenter: So the Coalition will block this.  Mark Butler, what are the numbers here?  Is it likely to get through the Senate?

Butler: Well I think that remains to be seen.  Not just the Senate but the House of Reps to see what the crossbenchers, what their view is about this.  I mean it’s no surprise I guess really that the Liberal Party is instinctively going to back in the interests of the media barons here.  So I guess over the next few days we’ll see what the position of the crossbenchers and the Greens Party will be about this.

Presenter: Mark Butler; Labor MP for Port Adelaide, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, thank you for your time.

 

Butler: Thank you.

Presenter: And Christopher Pyne, Liberal MP for Sturt, Shadow Minister for Education, Manager of Opposition Business in the House, thank you for your time.

Pyne: Pleasure.

ENDS.