MEET THE PRESS
INTERVIEWS WITH COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER HELEN COONAN AND DEMOCRATS LEADER LYN ALLISON
July 16th 2006
DISCUSSIONS ABOUT CHANGES TO MEDIA RULES, LIBERAL LEADERSHIP, POSSIBLE MEDIA DUOPOLY, DEMOCRATS’ FUTURE ELECTORAL PROSPECTS, DRUG POLICY, ABORTION DRUG RU486
MEET THE PRESS PRESENTER PAUL BONGIORNO: Hello, and welcome to Meet the Press. At a meeting dominated by leadership tensions, Helen Coonan gets the nod for new media laws.
JOURNALIST: Can the Prime Minister and the Treasurer work together, do you think?
COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER HELEN COONAN: I think they can, thank you very much. I thought you might have all gone home by now.
JOURNALIST: Have you changed the media rules?
HELEN COONAN: There's been a decision on the media, and I'll be making an announcement later this week.
PAUL BONGIORNO: The Communications Minister is our guest. Later, more setbacks for the Australian Democrats, their leader Lyn Allison will join us. But first, what the nation's papers are reporting this Sunday July 16 - The 'Sun-Herald' leads with "Get us out of here." A troop of Sydney dancers trapped in their Beirut hotel have made a desperate plea for the Australian government to save them. The plea comes as Israel continues its bombardment of Lebanon. The 'Sunday Age' reports "We're going to open war." Hezbollah's chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah says, "Israel wanted open war, we're going to open war." The declaration comes after a missile struck an Israeli warship. The 'Sunday Mail' has "New peace plan." Senior Liberals have floated a compromise deal on the party's leadership that would see John Howard contest the election next year and hand over to Peter Costello in 2008. And in breaking news, Reuters News Agency reports the United Nation Security Council has voted unanimously to impose weapons-related sanctions on North Korea in response to its missile tests earlier this month. John Howard says last week was not a good look for the Government as he and the Treasurer slugged it out over the succession. As the smoke of battle began to clear, the Communications Minister emerged with a blueprint for far-reaching new media laws. Welcome back to the program, Minister.
HELEN COONAN: Good morning, Paul.
PAUL BONGIORNO: By all reports, it was a fairly tense meeting. How did you get your colleagues to concentrate on your submission?
HELEN COONAN: I think it was an example of how the Treasurer and the Prime Minister continue to work very effectively together. We're getting on with the job. We're working in the interests of getting these kind of big things fixed, and it was a very vigorous discussion, it took some considerable time, but we worked through a pretty heavy agenda. I just think it does show that we can continue to all work together.
PAUL BONGIORNO: The old aphorism is that disunity is death in politics. It doesn't seem to be working here, does it?
HELEN COONAN: If there is disunity, and that's your suggestion not mine, it certainly didn't affect us in the cabinet agenda, and we got through really a very tough agenda. No-one could suggest that getting your head around media reform that has eluded a lot of discussions wasn't a tough ask.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Many thought it would take you two cabinet meetings to get it through - you got it through in one.
HELEN COONAN: We got the framework through but it is a very, very far-reaching package. It's all about transition. It's about what you can do now and what you need to do to set it up for the future. So it had about nine components to it and it's got a couple of areas where there needs to be some detailed implementation now we have the decision in principle to go ahead.
PAUL BONGIORNO: We're certainly going to come to some of those issues in detail. What do you think of that report today in the News Limited papers of a peace deal, if you like, where Mr Howard contests the next election but hands over in 2008. Does that sound viable to you?
HELEN COONAN: Well, I think what is really important is that the Prime Minister has earned the right to really go at a time of his choosing. I don't really know what kind of deal is being referred to here, how viable it would be. I think the situation is - I mean, we are really in the carriage with Mr Howard. Mr Howard is driving and that's the way it will go forward until he wishes to make a decision about his future.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Peter Costello clearly believes that after 10 years of the Howard prime ministership, the time has come for the long-thwarted handover. Here's how he put it on Wednesday.
TREASURER PETER COSTELLO: I think that the Liberal Party would be best served by a smooth transition. That's what I said to him, and I've said that publicly, because if transitions aren't smooth, ultimately that works against the political party. And that's what I said.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Do you agree with him?
HELEN COONAN: Well, what I agree with is that I think that we do have some fairly outstanding people in the Liberal Party. Obviously at some stage, at a point of Mr Howard's choosing, there will be a decision as to how the transition actually goes. I actually think that the Treasurer has made an extraordinary contribution to Australia. I have worked very closely with him as Assistant Treasurer, perhaps closer with him than most people who are making comments, and I can say that I respect his opinion. I think he has an outstanding contribution to make. I think it's very unfortunate that this incident has arisen, and I am unequivocally in favour of Mr Howard making a decision at a time of his choosing. That's what he said he'll do - he'll make a decision when...in the interests of the party.
PAUL BONGIORNO: You have worked closely with Peter Costello. Some people saw those very remarks I have just played to you as a veiled threat that Mr Costello will mount a challenge, will destabilise to get the leadership.
HELEN COONAN: Well, it's not seriously in his character to do that or he would have done it well beforehand if he were acting on what he now says are certain things that were said to him. I think we just have to settle down. What the Australian people expect is that we'll all get on with our respective jobs. There isn't any doubt that Mr Howard is the Prime Minister, and he has a claim and a stake to continue until a time of his choosing, in my view.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Going on to the media framework, this Zanetti cartoon sees you trying to restrain new digital media while hanging on to old media models, and Rupert Murdoch seems to agree with the cartoonist. News Limited has described your policy as "alarmingly protectionist for a Liberal Government." It's a pretty big claim for them to make.
HELEN COONAN: It's a very confusing way to put it, isn't it, by News commentators, who all seem to be, one way or another, singing from the same hymn sheet. What News, of course, would prefer is that there be really a totally deregulated media environment which would mean that there would be less available to consumers free to air. My view about this is that if you were seriously looking at the interests of consumers, and I am, what you have here are settings that give people free to air services that they enjoy, they're used to them, and to transition out of that, of course, you've got to give them some new services. So what this is all about is a transition, where consumers get more now with more services into the future.
PAUL BONGIORNO: I think that's News Limited's point. Down the track we could have 40 free to air channels on digital. So they've spent, so they say, $600 million on digital pay television. What's the future for pay in your view?
HELEN COONAN: Well, pay of course is very profitable. It's now become very profitable. The whole argument when you go back to the debates back in 2000, when we got these digital settings put in place, was that pay would have until 2009 before there'd be multi-channelling to give them a very good opportunity, as a more or less fledgling part of the industry, to be able to develop their business model. I think they've done that very successfully, and they will of course get some wins out of the review of the anti-siphoning scheme which will be introduced on January 1 with a win - a lose it or use it scheme. That will of course be something that News will expect, and I think there have been some abuses by the free to airs of the anti-siphoning list. It does need a prune.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Coming up when the panel joins us, claims the new media laws are a disaster for Australian democracy.
PAUL BONGIORNO: You're on Meet the Press the Communications Minister Helen Coonan. Welcome to the panel Michelle Gratton, the 'Age', and Brian Toohey, columnist with the 'Australian Financial Review'. Within six years most people's current TVs will be obsolete, but once they convert to digital they'll have more free to air channels to choose from. Gone will be many of the restrictions on who can own media outlets, and running a newspaper won't stop a proprietor also owning a TV station and a radio outlet in the same city.
SHADOW COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER LYNDSAY TANNER: The Government's new media ownership laws are a total disaster for Australian They mean that in metropolitan markets you'll be able to have one or two people totally control all the major outlets that influence public debate, and similar circumstances in country Australia.
PAUL BONGIORNO: That prompts Michelle Gratton.
MICHELLE GRATTAN: Senator, couldn't Mr Tanner be right if, for example, Nine bought Fairfax and Murdoch bought Channel Ten?
HELEN COONAN: Well, I think what Mr Tanner totally overlooks, apart from the fact that that the Labor Party haven't had a communications policy, I think, for about 20 years, and they just go up and down on the same old spot, what Mr Tanner's comment totally overlooks is the fact that there are safeguards there. It would depend on a number of factors that would require the ACCC to look at whether there'd be substantial diminution of competition in a particular market. Obviously, the minimum voices or media groups test would also have to be met. But what is a market is also something that the ACCC is looking very carefully at, and Mr Samuel, the chairman of the ACCC, has said pretty clearly that he's looking at things that are not just the regulated platform. So it's not just ownership of assets that he's talking about, he's also talking about things like tying up content. So you simply couldn't make those assumptions without knowing all of the facts at the particular time.
MICHELLE GRATTAN: Just to go to this question of voices, you've got a provision for minimum of five voices in metropolitan markets. But what does this mean? You could have, say, two or three totally dominant voices and just a couple of rats and mice sort of voices, surely?
HELEN COONAN: Well, that comes back to the old argument about what is an influence in a voice, which has always been a very difficult thing if you're trying to use influence of voices as a test, because one particular voice might be very popular but it mightn't be a news outlet, for instance. In fact, we've got a lot of radio stations counted in voices in metropolitan markets, so we've got to really seriously look at an objective test, which is number of media groups, but then have the overlay of what it will do to the market, what it will really do to the scene, if you like, and I think that together that is a fair degree of protection, plus of course you've got all the other sources of news now. You've got both of the nationals, you've got the internet rampant. You've got pay TV, you've got lots of other sources. I mean, people can get sources of news now from everywhere in the world. I mean, this is not the same type of situation that we were looking at some years ago.
BRIAN TOOHEY: But the internet particularly applies to new sources of news that you didn't have before from overseas, but there aren't really many new sources of news - I'm talking about news now, information, not opinion, there's a million opinions out there - but news is a very costly thing to gather. So that it's really only the big organisations that do it. If you let a couple of them join together, say the example of Channel Nine taking over Fairfax, when that recent controversy came up about Channel Nine sacking people and a senior executive trying to order the journalist to sort of put the knife into Kerry Stokes from Channel Seven, that wasn't, as far as I know, reported on Channel Nine, and then would it be reported in the newspaper group? It wouldn't I don't think if Channel Nine took it over. So you're lessening the news outlets there.
HELEN COONAN: Just look at the way the media reforms are now being reported. I mean, the news organisations are all pretty much all on one note, aren't they, and that's under the current system. I think what we really need to do with this is not be afraid of a bit of scale and scope, provided there are other appropriate safeguards that will ensure that there isn't a wholesale concentration of content and that kind of influence, and I think it's also very important that we - I mean, you can get CNN, you can get opinion anywhere.
BRIAN TOOHEY: But that's from overseas. But just take your example of News Limited, pushing a barrow, by the look of things, in its coverage of your new reforms. That will be even more so if it took over Channel Ten. At the moment News Limited is making the argument that you're standing in the way of competition and then, without a hint of irony, saying, 'The trouble is there's too much competition for Foxtel,' the pay TV station that it owns 25% of, because you've let all this extra competition...
HELEN COONAN: Yes, it's a totally contradictory argument.
BRIAN TOOHEY: But how do you think you're going to stand up to the massive lobbying that they are threatening to bring on this and that Channel Nine, which doesn't like the competition either - the Packer group doesn't like the competition from extra channels - that they're going to bring a lot of lobbying power, and the Prime Minister has said he's not going to die on a ditch on this. Will you hold to this program?
HELEN COONAN: Absolutely we'll hold to the program, because it's not going to be up to me, quite frankly. It's going to be up to the regulators, the pair of them, to decide whether or not the potential merger or sale of assets or content deals are something that ought to be allowed in a market, and we have to remember that it won't be very long, Brian, before we'll have the same content, the absolute same content, being streamed over 3G phones, over broadband and broadcast. It's going to make a nonsense out of the licence area, anyway. At the moment, these are the most ubiquitous platforms, and we need to continue to regulate them and give consumers what they expect, but it's all moving on.
MICHELLE GRATTAN: Can I just change to the immediate politics of this? The National Party, especially Barnaby Joyce, have some worries about the package. Do you think you can accommodate his concerns? In other words, can you get this package through the Senate without substantial change?
HELEN COONAN: The kind of changes that might interest the Nationals are even greater controls of the media, of the cross-media laws, in regional areas. I think what is really important to understand here, Michelle, is that 63% of regional markets are too small to even get up to the threshold. There's about 19 markets where there could potentially be a merger, and we have put in, in the package, additional protections that a merger of all of the regulated platforms in any market, that is newspaper, radio and print, would have to first be subject to jumping through a pre-clearance process with the ACCC.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Minister, it seems that nobody is wholly condemning in the Senate - I mean, wholly condemning your framework. In the negotiations, would you, for example, be prepared to split out the ownership and cross media from other sessions or is it a whole integrated package?
HELEN COONAN: I've said before it works best as a package and, quite frankly, I think we really do have to move on. If we don't do the relaxation of the cross-media laws and the foreign ownership laws now it will simply become redundant over years. There was an option in my original discussion paper pushing it out until when there was switch off. I have think there would have been a meltdown if we'd done that because people do need to look at being able to invest in new media. That's very important. I think you really need to do it all together.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Thank you very much for being with us today. Senator Helen Coonan. Coming up, Democrats leader Lyn Allison. And the Howard-Costello leadership deal is the theme of our cartoon of the week from Alan Moir in the 'Sydney Morning Herald'. "Leadership promise 12 years ago." "Peter, you know the Government's policy is not to remember anything more than 12 hours ago."
PAUL BONGIORNO: You're on Meet the Press. Last week, while the turmoil at the top of the Liberal Party swamped the media, the Australian Democrats’ run of setbacks continued. The party's national president quit over a bitter disagreement on drugs policy with the sole Democrat MP in South Australia. The State was formally a party stronghold.
RICHARD PASCOE (JULY 11): In the end I had no choice. And I hope that me going really inspired something to happen.
HAYDON MANNING (JULY 11): It does look like yet another nail in the coffin of the Democrats in South Australia and perhaps indeed nationally.
PAUL BONGIORNO: And Federal Leader, Senator Lyn Allison joins us. Senator, the predictions of the demise of the Democrats have been everywhere. Do you think they're optimistic or pessimistic in their outcomes?
DEMOCRATS LEADER SENATOR LYN ALLISON: Well, Paul, we had a Morgan Poll that came out on Friday that showed us at double the polling that we had at the last election. We haven't had a poll for the Upper House yet, the Senate, and I think that's where we do well. So I'm optimistic. I think that we've - our performance over the last couple of years has been second to none, and I think people will appreciate that in the Senate, and there'll be much more focus on the Senate at the next election, so, yes, I'm optimistic.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Have you been able to sort out the drugs policy issue that led to the national president quitting?
LYN ALLISON: Look, I don't think it's so much sorting out an issue. I think that whilst I wouldn't have quite put it in the same way that Sandra did over the use of ecstasy, I think there is a genuine need for us to debate drugs and harm minimisation - we're a very strong harm minimisation proponent - and I think we do need to get real about party drugs, rave parties and so on because there are dangers associated with these drugs. But if we don't talk about them and if we don't understand why it is that young people have accepted drugs into their culture, then we're not going to be able to deal with the problem. So I think that really the reaction in South Australia was quite an hysterical one that is typical, I might say, of the media really capitalising on the fear that parents have about young people and drugs, and it doesn't help us move forward. And it's similar, for instance, to the great fuss that was made about the safe drug injecting rooms in Sydney. They've proved to be enormously positive in terms of getting people onto detox and rehabilitation, and yet we rarely hear about that. So I think we need to bring a bit of rational thinking into this whole debate, and Sandra's played a role in that for a long time.
BRIAN TOOHEY: Just going back to the overall point, realistically the Democrats have gone backwards. What's your analysis of why that's happened when surely the case for strong third parties being needed is stronger than ever when the Government has complete control of the Senate?
LYN ALLISON: I don't have a complete answer to that, Brian. I think we are picked on to some extent, if I can say that. (Laughs) I mean, no-one's talking about Family First or the National Party and yet their polling is often lower than ours. No-one's talking about the Greens and the fact that their polling went down to, I think, 5% a week or so ago. I think that our strength is the Senate, and that's certainly how we'll be playing the next election. I'm confident that we can hold seats.
MICHELLE GRATTAN: But you used to be...
LYN ALLISON: I'm not overconfident.
MICHELLE GRATTAN: You used to be the really dominant third force, and now you've completely slipped out of that role. Family First is coming up, not going down, if anything, and you're about to lose three, possibly four, seats at next year's election, so don't you have to look internally for the answers to this problem?
LYN ALLISON: We have looked internally for the answers, Michelle, and we've concluded that there isn't anything wrong with our policies, that, in fact, what we stand for is still what's valued, and that's what people say to me, "We really need the Democrats." I think it's important for us to make sure that we get across to the electorate that that's the work we do and, to some extent, we need media to assist us in focusing on some of that important work in the Senate.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Senator Allison, I think...
LYN ALLISON: So it's a challenge - I don't say it isn't - but we certainly haven't had a poll of the Senate yet and we are a Senate party. We have been for a long time, and I think that's our strength.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Senator Allison, you've lost your earpiece. Can you hear me at all? No. Now it's back in. Can you hear me at all? How's that? Is that better?
LYN ALLISON: I'm on air again, yes, thank you.
BRIAN TOOHEY: To go with an issue that's current at the moment. In fact, our previous guest Helen Coonan, and the new proposed new media legislation. Would the Democrats be willing to support some parts of it, say the new multi-channelling, or is it just going to do a blanket opposition to the whole thing?
LYN ALLISON: No. Look, we do agree that there needed to be a reform in our media ownership laws, no question about that. They haven't resulted in diversity, they've not resulted in open competition, so we do support change. Datacasting and multi-channelling we certainly support. We support a new channel, a new digital channel. But we do think that these changes are going to see enormous concentration of media ownership, and that's a big problem because our democracy depends on a diversity of views and freedom of journalists for interests to critique governments. So I think that there are grave dangers. The five voices, so-called as, Michelle, you pointed out earlier, could mean just two major players and a host of smaller ones. We haven't seen the detail on that. The ACCC doesn't have the powers to properly make sure that these mergers are not damaging. We don't have a public interest test on mergers and takeovers. The ACCC needs much more powers in terms of creeping acquisitions. There are a lot of reforms that we'd like to see in there, and we'll be putting up to amendments to introduce some of those.
MICHELLE GRATTAN: Senator, could I turn briefly to another issue that you were very important in, and that was the abortion drug RU486. It seems to have run into problems, even though you got through the change you needed to take it out of the Minister's hands. It doesn't seem to be particularly freely available. What's your take on all this?
LYN ALLISON: Yes, we're still waiting for two overseas companies to make an application to the TGA to bring the drug to Australia. In the meantime, there have been applications made successfully. And Professor de Costa, for instance, in Queensland will use RU486 for her patients. The main problem is that this drug is now off patent, and the very large sum of money required to have the application made to the TGA is off-putting for pharmaceutical companies.
PAUL BONGIORNO: Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you for coming back on air. Thanks also to our panel Michelle Gratton and Brian Toohey. Until next week, good-bye.