After months of tense negotiations with the crossbenchers, the Minister for Communications, Senator the Hon Mitch Fifield, secured his most significant legislative win?—?getting his media reform package through the Senate late on Thursday afternoon.
The reform passed thanks to the support of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, the Nick Xenophon Team and Senators David Leyonhjelm, Derryn Hinch and Lucy Gichui, with the upper house voting for the media package, 31–27.
The Senate’s final approval, with a mixture of Government and crossbench amendments, sees the elimination of the contentious ‘two-out-of-three’ rule?—?whereby media companies will now be able to own a TV station, radio station and newspaper in the same market.
The rule was originally designed to stop any one media company growing too far beyond their charter and having a disproportionately larger voice, however with the digital media landscape, many media companies are actually shrinking with organisations like Fairfax on a perennially adapting ‘cost-cutting’ strategy.
The changes also see the removal of the ’75 per cent reach rule’?—?a rule that prevented any TV network from broadcasting to a licence area with a combined population of more than three-quarters of Australians. The most obvious effect will be that metropolitan TV stations such as Seven and Nine would be within their legal rights to buy small regional players, such as Prime, WIN and Southern Cross.
Labor and the Greens opposed the change. They said it would lead to a less diverse, more consolidated media market with less choice for consumers.
The union representing journalists, the MEAA, also warned further consolidation would mean more cost-cutting in the long run and less jobs for its members.
