Australia’s centre-left Labor government unveiled a shake-up of media laws on Tuesday, introducing a public interest test for mergers but stopping short of press regulation as feared by the industry.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the reforms, drafted after an inquiry into Australia's media following the phone-hacking scandal in Britain, were aimed at modernising the industry and guarding fairness and diversity.
If passed into law, the changes would bring a public interest test to ‘nationally significant’ mergers and acquisitions, which Conroy said was not the same as the ‘fit and proper person’ test seen in Britain.
It would be monitored by a new statutory authority called the Public Interest Media Advocate, which would oversee a robust self-regulation model, the minister said, stressing that the government would have no role.
‘The government will not fund or oversee press standards bodies, they will be run, funded and operated by the print media themselves,’ he said.
Proprietors, most vocally Rupert Murdoch’s dominant local arm News Limited, had feared official regulation of the press, but Conroy said the present model of self-regulation would continue, although it would be tightened.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the reforms, drafted after an inquiry into Australia's media following the phone-hacking scandal in Britain, were aimed at modernising the industry and guarding fairness and diversity.
If passed into law, the changes would bring a public interest test to ‘nationally significant’ mergers and acquisitions, which Conroy said was not the same as the ‘fit and proper person’ test seen in Britain.
It would be monitored by a new statutory authority called the Public Interest Media Advocate, which would oversee a robust self-regulation model, the minister said, stressing that the government would have no role.
‘The government will not fund or oversee press standards bodies, they will be run, funded and operated by the print media themselves,’ he said.
Proprietors, most vocally Rupert Murdoch’s dominant local arm News Limited, had feared official regulation of the press, but Conroy said the present model of self-regulation would continue, although it would be tightened.