• Julian Thomas

22 February 2010A makeover is long overdue, writes Julian Thomas in the Australian

CONFUSION and disarray surround Stephen Conroy's decision to rebate licence fees for commercial television broadcasters. The decision raises the most basic question that can be asked about government dispensation of any kind: what was this money for?

Was the $250 million a subsidy, a tax break, or a quid pro quo? Was it a grant for local content, assistance for digital conversion, a political pay-off, or bailout money for an industry which Senator Conroy now says is in terminal decline? Whatever the answer, the result seems to prove the contention that the more you ask for, the less you need to explain.

In fact, the confusion is not the senator's fault. He's not the first communications minister to give the networks generous rebates without much in the way of public discussion, and he won't be the last. The Coalition made precisely the same move a decade ago when the switch to digital began...

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Julian Thomas is director of the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology

Photo: Shaun Lowe/ iStockphoto.com