Senate vote to delay media reforms
The Senate has voted to tie up Stephen Conroy's media reforms in a committee until June.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
The Senate has voted to tie up Stephen Conroy’s media reforms in a committee, possibly for months.
Greens and Coalition MPs today voted to extend the deadline for a committee to report from March 20 to June 17.
At the same time, independent Craig Thomson is the first of the crossbenchers to declare his vote on the media reform bills, saying he will not be supporting the package.
”I don’t think it achieves the aims, I’m not sure that I agree with all of the aims. I think we need a much broader discussion to come up with proper reform,” he told SKY News.
”Rushing in a package which you’re not allowed to have any say in terms of how it works just doesn’t work.”
Labor five out of seven votes from the crossbench to pass the reforms but independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie have also expressed strong misgivings.
ASTRA chairman Steve Bracks said the proposed reforms would not help preserve diversity.
”Attempting to impose diversity through more regulation is only likely to restrict opportunities for growth and investment in the Australian media sector,” he said in his opening address to the ASTRA conference.
Update: This afternoon there was a tense meeting of committee members at which Labor senators used their numbers to insist on a report by next Wednesday after just two days of hearings.
Source: News Limited, Fairfax.
5 Responses
The merger or probable merger would cause a huge upheaval in Tasmania as WIN and Southern Cross each hold half of TDT which is TEN in Tasmania. Southern Cross screens Seven and WIN shows Nine. It would be good if they were forced to sell TDT in Tasmania and put some real competition in Tasmania for local news.
Just one word describe this “Censorship” :thumbsdown:
”Rushing in a package which you’re not allowed to have any say in terms of how it works just doesn’t work.” Please – it’s been taking submissions and releasing reports for years. What more is there to know? Anyway, it won’t get through.
Conroy doesn’t really want to do anything. That is why he has tabled his reforms at the last minute and refused to discuss the issue.
The Government would love the Greens and Thompson to vote them down. It increases the distance between Government and them and helps both sides position themselves for the next 9 month of the election campaign.
The proposed SCM and Nine merger will be very interesting for Adelaide and Perth as WIN owns Channel 9 in those cities. If Nine goes with SCM and dumps WIN, it will be a very tense situation when it comes to affiliate negotiations for Nine Adelaide and Perth. What I suspect will happen is WIN will sell Adelaide and Perth to Nine and then make a move on TEN as they won’t be able to own Nine and Ten in one city.