Dr EMERSON (5:31 PM) —For many years now, major media proprietors have wanted the abolition of the cross-media ownership rules. It is a long cherished goal of those who are part of the concentration of media ownership in Australia. If the government were to succeed in getting passage of this legislation through the Senate, it would be delivering that long cherished wish to those media proprietors. Let us be clear about this during the course of this debate. This legislation is not about reform of media policy; it is—to borrow a term from the government—about appeasement. It is about appeasing media proprietors who want a more liberal regime so that they can prosper in such a regime, and no doubt would express considerable gratitude to the government for allowing that to happen. That would all be at the expense of diversity.

All members on this side of the parliament—and I see the member for Lowe is in the chamber—have been passionate champions of media diversity in this country. This government obviously has no commitment to maintaining and strengthening media diversity in this country. Reasons for that will become evident during the course of what I have to say this afternoon. I point out that, as shadow minister for innovation and industry, I have offered to be involved in discussions on how to provide greater competition in the Australian media industry. We have a long tradition on this side of the parliament of encouraging and fostering competition in Australia. We want to do that while maintaining diversity. If you have more players, you will enhance diversity as a result of that competition.

In making those offers of looking at ways of increasing competition in the media market, I did not find a very responsive set of media proprietors or representatives of those proprietors, with perhaps one exception and that was the Seven Network. They seem to be interested in the idea of more competition in the media market in Australia, but I did not glean that at all from any of the others. The offer was there but there was not much interest in it. The reason for that is evident: there is no particular interest on the part of those who are involved in the concentration of media ownership in Australia in competition or in diversity. In that, they are at one with the government because the government is not interested in diversity of media ownership and is moving with this legislation to achieve an even greater concentration of media ownership in this country.

A way of testing my proposition that there is not any real interest in competition and diversity on the part of the already quite concentrated media ownership regime in Australia is that, if there were interest in competition, there might be an open-minded or pragmatic attitude towards relaxing the foreign ownership rules. It turns out that there is very little interest. In fact, there is quite a lot of hostility to the notion of relaxing the foreign ownership rules while maintaining the cross-media ownership rules. In other words, the existing proprietors do not want foreign competition in this country. To a greater or lesser extent, proprietors are tending towards monopolist behaviour. It seems to me that in respect of foreign ownership restrictions, a foreign media proprietor is no more or less noble than an Australian media proprietor. Perhaps there is some merit in looking at the question of the foreign ownership rules, but there is no interest in that on the part of the media. Why? Because it provides greater competition.

For too long, media ownership policy has been the captive of a political desire to keep media proprietors happy. The way policy has been developed for some time now is that some sort of concession is made to one media proprietor. That media proprietor becomes happy with the government but another media proprietor in competition with the first one becomes unhappy. The government then offers a benefit to that media proprietor. Instead of developing an open and clear framework for decision making that is based on the national interest and the interests of readers, viewers and listeners, the government is in this eternal process of handing goodies to one media proprietor, making another one unhappy and saying, `That's all right; we'll make you happy by handing you a bunch of goodies as well.' I cannot think of a worse way of developing and implementing government policy in this country.

An example of failed government policy in relation to the media is the digital television and associated datacasting legislation. That legislation has failed because it has tried to anticipate technological change and where that would take Australian media and Australian consumers. Related to that, it has tried to anticipate the success in the market of these new technologies. Surely, at some point in time, the government will learn the folly of trying to develop legislation that is so prescriptive that it anticipates where the market might be headed. The far better approach to policy is to provide a stable and transparent framework that is not overly prescriptive but protects the national interest and the interests of the Australian people who are users of the media and, therefore, above all, maintains media diversity.

Instead of that, the government is proposing a bill that it knows will fail. This bill is nothing but high farce. It is designed to fail. Why? The answer to that is that the government wants to say to media proprietors, `We are on your side. We—the government—are happy to see a concentration of media ownership in this country, but it was Labor who blocked it.' So they put forward a totally ridiculous bill, a farcical bill, that would require the operation of separate newsrooms independent of each other that would involve a very heavy level of interference in the editorial content of those newsrooms. How do we know that? Because the arbiter, the Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, Professor David Flint, has already expressed publicly his view that there should be no cross-media ownership rules at all. So the proposal that the government is putting to the parliament is a proposal that is designed to fail so that the government can go back to media proprietors and say, `We did our best, but Labor blocked it. Support us during the term of this parliament and support us during the election campaign, because we are on the good side and Labor is on the bad side.'

The reason that we have a different view is that we have a long and proud tradition of being committed to media diversity in this country. Under the government's legislation, the spectre is of one or two large media conglomerates in this country. Can you just imagine what that would mean for democracy and the ability to provide a variety of views to the community? Already there is a proliferation of conservative columnists in this country in existing media proprietors. These conservative commentators, under the guise of railing against political correctness, condemn anyone with an open or positive view about supporting racial harmony in this country. They say that supporting racial harmony is just being politically correct.

When people on the Labor side of politics support multiculturalism, we get this criticism from conservative commentators, `You're just being politically correct.' When we support an apology to Aboriginal people, we get this commentary from conservative columnists that we are just being politically correct—as if it is now fashionable to the politically incorrect and to oppose racial harmony, to support division, to oppose multiculturalism and to oppose an apology to the Aboriginal people because it is some creation of political correctness.

In the adjournment debate the other night I pointed to a classic example of this: the case of Janet Albrechtsen, who, Media Watch alleged, had inserted into an article relating to the gang rapes in Sydney an observation that somehow these gang rapes were a ritual of young Muslim men against white women. The allegation on Media Watch is that the journalist, Janet Albrechtsen, inserted the words `Muslim' and `white' in a quote from a French psychotherapist. I have been through that extensively and it is clear to me that that allegation is proven.

I will take this opportunity to seek leave to adjourn the debate to allow government members and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to make some remarks about another piece of legislation that is returning from the Senate. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.