Australia’s Media Reform Bill Delayed in Parliament

SYDNEY: The Australian government has reintroduced a media reform bill, which is facing another ten-week inquiry.

The bill was put before a senate committee earlier this year, and was reintroduced in the lower house of parliament. It has now been sent to a senate environment and communications committee.

This new ten-week delay was much to the dismay of broadcasters looking for a quick passage of the bill, which abolishes the 75 percent audience-reach rule, an impediment to mergers between metropolitan and regional TV networks. The bill also proposes to relax the two-out-of-three cross-media ownership rule, which would allow a media company to own a TV station, newspaper and radio station in the same market.

Ten Network’s CEO, Paul Anderson, said: “The parliament has a simple choice: get behind the Australian media companies that are investing in local content and local jobs and give us a fair chance to compete, or continue to give our big tech competitors a free ride by strangling local media companies.

“The only way to ensure media diversity in Australia is to have strong, viable local media companies and the existing rules are a real threat to that. The foreign-owned tech companies have demonstrated that they are not interested in any meaningful investment in local content or local news, so we need our local voices to remain strong.

“In order to compete, local media companies need to grow, transform and leverage content across multiple platforms, and the current laws—combined with the onerous tax of the world’s highest television license fees—are arbitrarily stopping us from doing that,” he said.

“By holding us back, these rules are giving the foreign tech giants a major competitive advantage and that is on top of arrangements that mean they pay minimal tax on revenue earned in Australia.

“We are yet to hear any rational argument in favor of keeping the two-out-of-three rule, which only applies to three offline media platforms and doesn’t even recognize the existence of the internet,” Anderson continued. “It is illogical and antiquated and threatens local diversity by constraining Australian media companies in our efforts to grow and compete.”

“We are disappointed that we now face another extended ten-week inquiry into the bill. After years of debate and discussion we urgently need the parliament to get behind local voices and give us fairer rules and certainty around the regulatory framework. The existing media rules have to go, and quickly.”