Media reform will reduce diversity and is just window dressing

The new media reform laws do nothing to address the underlying problem of an increasingly concentrated media landscape, argues Associate Professor Tim Dwyer from the Department of Media and Communications. The breakthrough in negotiations with the Senate crossbenchers that the government has been chipping away at has finally arrived. The deregulatory legislation, the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Broadcasting Reform) Bill 2017 , required 38 votes to pass the Senate, where the Coalition controls 29 votes. It had already secured the support of three crossbenchers and four One Nation senators, but was waiting for just two votes to get it over the line - until Nick Xenophon did the deal. After protracted negotiations with Xenophon and his NXT party, the coalition has arrived at a quid pro quo deal that sees the repeal of the remaining cross-media diversity rules , after the government agreed to NXT's proposal to introduce funding grants for small and regional publishers. Clearly, though, they are not the "substantial quid pro quo" for public interest journalism that Xenophon has trumpeted, which had previously included tax breaks. The main features of the bill are: repeal of the "two out of three" rule and the 75% reach rule; the creation of one-off A$50 million innovation fund for smaller and regional publishers, whose turnover is between A$300,000 and A$30 million.