Since the ALP’s return to government in May, its communications policies have been slowly taking shape. Last month’s budget saw the expected cash injections for the ABC, community broadcasting and local and regional publishers, as well as funding to investigate strategies to aid the ailing news sector. Before the election, Michelle Rowland spelled out the need for extensive legislative reform, but details remained sketchy until a series of ministerial speeches over the last few weeks.
Perhaps the biggest move so far is Rowland’s announcement last week that Labor will task ACMA with developing a new model for measuring diversity in Australian news media. This has been a long time coming. ACMA released a model framework for assessing diversity and localism in December 2020, which recognised that the media ownership and control rules were no longer fit for purpose in the internet age. CMT undertook an extensive literature review for ACMA and, along with other media researchers, participated in a series of stakeholder consultations that informed ACMA’s model framework. There has been a great deal of work on assessing the health and diversity of Australian media over the past several years, including from the Public Interest Journalism Initiative, and the Media Pluralism Project.
The diversity measurement framework was one of several priorities for regulatory reform that Rowland set out in her speech. Aside from expected moves on prominence and anti-siphoning rules, in the medium term we are likely to see some long-awaited action on classification and industry codes to encourage consistency amongst the different industry sectors. Spectrum-related reforms are likely to wait.
One area in which there has been relatively little news is the regulation of digital platforms, including on the previous government’s plans to grant ACMA increased powers relating to DIGI’s disinformation and misinformation code. Rowland said the government was ‘eager … to work towards making the online environment a more competitive, fair and trustworthy space for Australian users and businesses,’ but whether this leads to the proposed changes remains to be seen. The budget saw new funding for media literacy programs in schools, and Rowland has noted the importance of strong public-service media in countering misinformation. Importantly, Rowland has also pointed to the need for improved protections for press freedom and defamation reform, with the attorney general pushing those reforms.
Michael Davis, CMT Research Fellow