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Conroy met Stokes before rebate deal

Stephen Conroy has admitted skiing with Seven CEO Kerry Stokes in Colorado just a month before the announcing the $250m rebate for networks.

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Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy has admitted skiing with Seven Chairman Kerry Stokes in Colorado just a month before the government announced the rebate to commercial television networks, worth around $250m.

“Last month I visited Colorado on a personal holiday, which was fully paid for by me, including all airfares from Australia to Colorado,” Conroy has told the Sunday Telegraph.

“On one day during this trip I visited Mr. Stokes and returned to my accommodation that evening.”

The rebate over commercial license fees, couched by the government as a means to ensure Australian content on TV, has been criticised by sections of the industry. It came without any extra conditions to protect local content.

But Conroy, who says he attended media events, says he meets many industry heavyweights.

Seven spokesman Simon Francis said: “Mr Stokes is enjoying his annual holiday at Beaver Creek in the United States, as he does every northern winter. It his own personal time and given that, we don’t canvass how he enjoys his holidays.”

Source: Sunday Telegraph

10 Responses

  1. Benno has hit the nail on the head.

    I cannot believe, in a deomcracy, that this bloke still has a job. He lives in the dark ages and has no idea what the majority of the people want just what his cronies have to say.

  3. Gotta agree with Benno and Stu. Conroy’s got to go.
    If this guy isn’t throwing money to broadcasters ‘with no strings’ then he is getting his mates $450k p/a jobs. Add to that, his contempt for court over iiNet; the Big Brother blacklist of websites; and $17m wasted on the broadband tender.
    In the old days it took Labour a couple of terms to have ministers acting so corruptly and so incompetantly.

  4. I agree with Benno. Conroy has made so many blunders, so many bad decisions, and continues to demonstrate a level of ignorance at odds with the position he holds. It is obvious that everything he does is to feather his own nest, to buddy up with special interest groups, and to ‘acquire’ political allies. He certainly can’t be trusted with the oversight of a mandatory Australia-wide secret Internet censorship system. If Rudd won’t sack him, the voters will have to rid the country of his incompetence.

  8. Who is advising Conroy on these matters? This looks bad. This is a missed opportunity to support the local production industry and make it a win for everyone – instead it smells fishy. And by the way where is Peter Garrett when you need him to fight for local producers? MIA with some other catastrophe as usual. Garrett needs to resign and Conroy needs better advice.

  9. This thing with the “bribe/bailout” is so reminding me of the struggles with the fight in Canada, to force cable operators to pay local television stations (led by the main commercial networks in Canada) to retain local news.

    All this is going to do is encourage stations to invest in more offshore content, instead of stopping the real problem, the consolidation of television production in this country. If not stopped soon, there will be a situation, that if you want a TV job in the minor capitals, or regional areas, it will be done either in Sydney or Melbourne.

    #localtvmattersAU.

  10. This guy is corrupt and desperately needs to go.

    He mocks and misrepresents iiNet’s defence and got it completely wrong, botched the NBN tender process, bribed the commercial networks with a quarter of a billion dollars with zero obligations of how that money is spent, and let’s not forget the Internet censorship proposal with zero concrete goals besides the blatantly obvious one of setting up an online censorship system for current and further governments to abuse.

    FFS opposition party, what are you waiting for?

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