Introduction

Although Australia's media ownership laws have remained unchanged for over a decade, debate on the desirability of reform has continued unabated. This debate has been fuelled by the advent of new media technologies, a number of inquiries proposing regulatory changes, and the self-interest of those media organisations that report the controversy. The Government has long indicated that it believed the rules to be anachronistic, and in 2002 unsuccessfully attempted to amend the cross-media ownership restrictions.

The major effect of the laws is to prevent the common ownership of newspapers, television and radio broadcasting licences that serve the same region. The purpose of the legislation is to encourage diversity in the ownership of the most influential forms of the commercial media: the daily press and free-to-air television and radio. The justification for the rules is that the effective functioning of a democracy requires a diverse ownership of the daily mass media to ensure that public life be reported in a fair and open manner.