Submission to the Senate Standing Committees on

Environment and Communications

Media diversity, independence and reliability in

Philip Laird, , December 2020

This submission will be of a general nature. Given the state of print, radio and television media in Australia, the inquiry is timely.

1. The problems have been some years in the making. By way of example, for newspapers, in June 2012, Fairfax was under financial pressure, and announced plans to outsource sub-editing and page layout from the various capital cities and regional centres to offshore, including New Zealand.

This hit and the Mercury along with other regional papers hard. It also affected many people who for years who had did sub-editing work, often in close association with journalists and photographers.

This was despite the 2011 Annual Report of Fairfax placing emphasis on both Sustainability and corporate social responsibility. To quote "Sustainability means taking a long term view. It means recognising the vital links between the Company’s financial viability, delivering shareholder value and our responsibility to the community, the environment, employees and maintaining its high standard of editorial integrity."

2. One hundred years ago, classified advertising in newspapers were once described as rivers of gold. This situation continued up to the 1990s, and then as Google was established in 1998 and then developed an ability to attract advertising, along with other online sites, including Facebook in 2004, classified advertising in newspapers declined.

3. Which raises the questions, when paid advertisements were placed in overseas online sites, have they taxed in Australia with GST or another tax? If not, why not (and if this is still the situation, it should be rectified), and if so, why could not some of these taxes be used to support Australian print media.

4. Up to 2012, the Illawarra Mercury based in Wollongong had a proud record of speaking out for the region. This included helping victims of the 1998 floods gain a fair deal from major insurance companies and helping the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption clean up corruption within Wollongong City Council (which was placed under administration from 2008 to 2011). The Illawarra Mercury, as part of the Fairfax Group, over many decades had also given good training to young reporters and photographers.

Within twelve months of the staff cuts in 2012, the quality of offerings had fallen and the Illawarra Mercury was not the same paper. For some time, it lacked most days an Editorial, and comment in the print version was very limited.

Incredibly, further cuts were later made to Illawarra Mercury staff numbers. Later, ownership of the Illawarra Mercury changed when Fairfax was taken over by Nine in 2018, and it changed again when Nine later sold the Illawarra Mercury to Australian Community Media.

It may be noted that Wollongong is Australia's tenth largest city and the Illawarra Mercury has been published since 1855.

Since the 1980s, Fairfax supported a free weekly paper called the Advertiser, but this appeared to fall a victim to diminishing advertising revenue and then COVID-19 in Autumn 2020.

5. It is not just the regional that has had diminished print media, but also many other regional cities. This included Broken Hill in NSW where the Barrier Daily Truth was published from 1898 to 2020, now weekly. This newspaper is a further victim to not just COVID (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-09/saving-broken-hills-newspaper- barrier-truth-covid-19/12814324 ) but the real problem that now needs addressing of advertising revenue being diverted overseas.

6. The decline in classified advertising revenue has also severely impacted large city newspapers such as the Morning Herald, and, The Age. One result has been the emergence of much common material to both papers, sometimes referred to as SMAGE.

7. It is important that print media can be adequately resourced as to give a variety of views on a given topic, and not be beholden to a single publisher, possibly overseas based and owned, to promote a particular view.

The need for this is very clearly demonstrated in the issue of Climate Change and whether or not Australia is doing enough to reduce emissions.

8. If you live in Sydney or Melbourne, you can at least have the choice of a newspaper (SMAGE) that will give you differing views on climate change. If, however, you live in Australia’s third largest city of Brisbane, or live in Adelaide, and like newspapers, then apart from the Australian Financial Review (and smaller circulation papers), then you are likely to limited to a newspaper that has a long standing reputation of being into climate change denial etc.

This raises serious questions as to just how well Australia manages media independence and public interest journalism without being manipulated by foreign interests.

9. An important role of the media is the support of the all important investigative journalists.

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To take just one recent example, see https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets /caught-in-a-bear-trap-how-short-and-distort-attacks-are-costing-australian-investors-billions- 20201204-p56ksl.html by Adele Ferguson. This article notes how Australia has become a paradise for a new, aggressive form of short selling with foreign based research houses issuing highly damaging reports designed to damage companies. This, with the regulators' failure to act, is costing investors billions.

Many older examples are well covered in an exhibition in the Museum of Democracy in Old Parliament House in Canberra called Truth, Power and a Free Press. To quote https://www.moadoph.gov.au/exhibitions/truth-power-and-a-free-press/ “ Our new timely, permanent exhibition explores stories from those on the front line for the battle for truth.

“You will see objects from Australia’s media history brought together for the first time and hear stories direct from some of Australia’s leading journalists including Joanne McCarthy, Hedley Thomas, Laura Murphy-Oates, Hamish Macdonald, Adele Ferguson and more. “You will leave moved, excited and empowered to navigate filter bubbles, fake news and the importance of trusted media sources in a healthy democracy.”

10. Attention is drawn to a recent article https://theconversation.com/closures-cuts- revival-and-rebirth-how-covid-19-reshaped-the-nz-media-landscape-in-2020-151020? This article notes, inter alia, To put that in context, in the first half of 2020 search engines — mainly Google — received $361 million in digital advertising revenue in New Zealand, along with the social media platforms gobbling up 72% of the country’s total digital advertising spend. https://www.iab.org.nz/news/h1-q2-2020-digital-advertising-revenue-report/ has further information. It would be most interesting to see comparable figures for Australia.

11. An increasing number of younger adults are turning to their mobile phones for news and information. However, this news has to come from somewhere, and it is appropriate that those who benefit from advertising revenue make a much greater contribution than they currently do to the reporting of news, and its analysis.

12. It is bad enough seeing the Australian owned newspapers such as Fairfax facing financial pressure with a reduced number of journalists, including in Wollongong. It is also bad, even worse, to see the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as the major public broadcaster having to reduce its number of its journalists and other specialist staff.

The figures given in a Senate Estimates committee held in May 2018 say a lot. To quote from the Guardian website, 24 May 2018 “A total of 939 employees or 829 full-time- equivalent have been made redundant in four years, including 205 as a result of the closure of the ABC’s retail shops and a further 73 vacant positions were closed.

“The ABC has been shedding staff since the Coalition cut $254m from the ABC budget in 2014. Guthrie, who has been in the position for just over two years, has imposed several restructures which have led to hundreds of staff being made redundant. A further 22 journalists will be made redundant this month.”

3 13. The reported evidence of the ABC officer Ms Higgins given to a Senate Committee in May 2018 is of note:

“Thirty years ago, the ABC had five platforms and 6,000 employees,” she said. “Today, by contrast, we have six times the platforms but just two-thirds the staff and half the real funding per capita.”

Ms Higgins went on to note that the ABC faces two sets of rising costs “First, like our commercial peers here and abroad, the ABC faces production costs that are escalating faster than inflation, driven by the giant content budgets of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

“Second, we must maintain traditional broadcast services for our large and loyal audiences, at the same time as modernising our technology platforms so that digital audiences can access ABC content wherever, however and whenever they want it.”

14. Australia without the wide range of programming and services that the ABC offers would be a poorer place to live and work. The ABC contributions since of widespread drought (to this year), bush fires affecting many states (with impacts on the ACT), floods (including in the Blue Mountains of NSW) and COVID-19 have been helpful, and in many cases, reassuring in difficult times.

15. After a series of funding cuts in real terms, and at a time traditional print media in Australia has been under much pressure in the past 10 years, there is now a need for more funds for the ABC.

To quote from Mr Ranald McDonald AO in a December 2020 ABC Friends Update “ These are the yearly amounts the ABC has to spend on programs, general costs and staff as set down in the just-released 2020 Federal Budget: (2019/20 - actual $879 million.) 2020/21 - budget $879 million. 2021/22 - forward estimate $881 million 2022/23 - forward estimate $867 million 2023/24 - forward estimate $873 million.

“Costs of course go up each year, and in the area of production recently some 4% p.a. - the wage increase negotiated was 2%. Even if you accept as a done deal the freeze which has cost up to 250 jobs and then allow 2 1/2% a year for 22/23 and 23/24 over the $881 million 21/22 figure as a minimum for overall cost increases (and to claw back just a little on emergency service expenses) - then the further two year freeze (or cut!) imposed in the latest Coalition Budget will cost $67 million on top of the $87 lost funding over the earlier freeze.”

Dr Philip Laird, FCILT, Comp IE Aust

10 December 2020

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