Name: Michael Vaughan

Submission:

In Australia, Rupert Murdoch owns no fewer than 13 major national and state newspapers - these being The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, Herald Sun, Herald Sun Sunday, The Courier Mail, The Sunday Mail, The Advertiser, Sunday Mail, The Mercury, Sunday Tasmanian, NT News, and Sunday Territorian. The Murdochs own 64% of all news media in Australia. Such a concentration is greater than that of dictatorships such as Turkey and Russia. Murdoch's key interests are in money, political power and far-right ideology. His print media have close links to the conservative, pro-business, anti-union Liberal Party and its Coalition partner the National Party. The 2013 Federal Election was a case in point. During that Election, Murdoch's newspapers ran a blatant, anti-Labor campaign, epitomized by the 5 August 2013 banner headline of The Daily Telegraph "KICK THIS MOB

OUT." Matters did not end there. On Tuesday 6 August 2013 Adelaide's The Advertiser published a headline "RUNNING ON EMPTY", lambasting Labor's car industry policies. On Friday 9 August 2013, Brisbane's The Courier Mail ran a headline "SEND IN THE CLOWN", an attack on former Queensland Labor leader Peter Beattie. Over the second, third and fourth weeks of the five week Election campaign (12 to 31 August 2013), there were many front page headlines in Murdoch tabloids that were intensely anti-Labor. Not a single headline was anti- Liberal National Coalition and several actively promoted plans by the Coalition. This is not fair comment or free speech but rather is naked influence peddling and open promulgation of right-wing prejudice. It is time that this hugely one- sided media ownership conglomeration was subjected to judicial scrutiny and that recommendations for its reform be put forward.