Asia-Pacific Regional Press Freedom Seminar

Country Report - Australia

Ownership

There are 10 metropolitan, two national and 40 regional daily newspapers (and an additional 12 or so Sunday newspapers). In the community, there are about 100 weekly or twice-weekly suburban newspapers (mostly free) and about 250 country newspapers published once, twice or thrice weekly. Additionally there are a small number of country newspapers with less frequent publication.

There is a thriving magazine market with over 500 titles, many in niche areas with quite small circulations. Two other areas of note in Australian publishing are the religious and ethno-religious press, with more than 50 titles, and the ethnic language media with over 100 titles in a variety of community languages, of which the most common are Chinese, Greek, Italian, Arabic, Vietnamese and Spanish.

In the last two decades, many metropolitan newspapers have closed, including all specialist afternoon newspapers. (In Sydney and Melbourne, the last afternoon newspapers were merged with a morning newspaper, which added an extra - afternoon - edition.) With the exception of Sydney and Melbourne, no capital city now has more than one daily paper.

The major owners of newspapers are:

• News Limited - just under 70 per cent of total metropolitan and national daily circulation, three regional dailies in Queensland, a number of ancillary country newspapers and about 60% of suburban newspapers (some of which are not fully owned by News).
   
• John Fairfax Publishing controls about 20 per cent of the metropolitan and national daily newspaper publishing, has three regional dailies, a number of ancillary country newspapers and has about half the suburban circulation in Sydney and Melbourne.
   
• Rural Press, owned largely by a cadet branch of the Fairfax family (which no longer has an interest in John Fairfax Publications), publishes a large number of daily and weekly regional daily and country newspapers, as well as The Canberra Times.
   
• Australian Provincial Newspapers publishes fourteen regional daily newspapers in northern NSW and in Queensland, as well as a large number of weekly country newspapers and suburban newspapers in Melbourne.
   
• West Australian Newspapers publishes the Perth daily, one regional daily, a number of country newspapers and has a large interest in most of the Perth suburban newspapers.

The major influence in magazine circulation is Australian Consolidated Press, which divested itself of newspaper titles in the 1980s. Kerry Packer is the principal owner of ACP. The second major magazine publisher is Pacific Publications, formerly part of the News Limited. John Fairfax Publications, Murdoch Magazines and Time Inc are other substantial publishers of general interest magazines.

Restrictions on ownership

Since 1987, restrictions now apply in relation to cross-media ownership between the electronic media and newspapers. Under the Broadcasting Services Act, any entity that has substantial interest in an electronic outlet is restricted in the size of interest it can have in a newspaper published in the same area, and vice versa. So newspaper publishers can hold no more than 15 per cent of a television broadcaster or radio station which is broadcast in the same area as any of its newspapers is published. Because of the cross media rules, the owners of the major broadcast networks are separate from the newspaper owners. The larger radio network owners are again separate entities for television and newspaper owners.

Apart from the restrictions on cross-media ownership, the only restrictions on concentration of press ownership are the general ones contained in the Trade Practices Act, which sets out Australian anti-trust law and applies to all industries. Section 46 proscribes the abuse of monopoly power through predatory practices. Section 50 proscribes the attainment or increase of a dominant position in a market. However, these may be authorised if there is a public benefit in the take-over. It has been recommended recently to the government that the provisions of the Trade Practices Act be the only restriction on cross-media ownership.

Free press and threats to it

The Australian press has traditionally been regarded as free but there is no provision in either Australia's Federal Constitution or in any of the state constitutions which explicitly guarantees freedom of speech and of the free press. Australia inherited the traditional English view that freedom of speech was best protected by the common law. There have been unsuccessful attempts to incorporate a guarantee of free speech, alone or with other human rights, into the Australian Constitution. The Constitution, however, is notoriously difficult to amend.

It is arguable that the Constitution includes some implied guarantees of free speech. In recent cases the Australian High Court has ruled that freedom of political communication is protected by implication by the Constitution's commitment to representative government through elections. It has recently unanimously reinforced the existence of that implication, although its rulings demonstrate the fragility of a freedom guaranteed by implication rather than one written into over-riding law.

There are a number of areas in which press freedom are threatened and on which the Council keeps a watching brief. Chief among these are:

• defamation, where different regimes in each state and territory mean that newspaper which publish in more than one jurisdiction can be subject to vastly different legal standards;
   
• invasion of privacy where recent legislation restricts the use of personal information by private sector firms;
   
• official secrecy and access to government-held information;
   
• access to and disclosure of court documents and proceedings, where suppression orders and other restrictions can limits newspapers' ability to inform the public on matters of public interest; and
   
• contempt of court - recent recommendations in one state include provision for taxing the media for the cost of any trial aborted as a result of a contemptuous report.

Distribution of the powers between central and regional governments

The Commonwealth of Australia, a constitutional monarchy, is a federation of six states (New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia), and several territories (of which two, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, have a degree of self-government that in some respects is state-like). The power of the Federal Parliament to enact laws directed only at the press is limited. The press, however, is subject to a number of federal laws of general application which come within one or other of the areas of power granted to the Parliament, including taxation, defence, corporations, interstate and overseas trade and commerce.

There is no press law as such in Australia. There is a Newspapers and Printing Act (or similarly named Act) in four of the six states. The electronic media is governed by the Broadcasting Services Act, which mandates the licensing of both television and radio broadcasters.

There is no licensing system as such or any requirement of government approval to launch a newspaper or other press enterprise. All states and territories other than South Australia and Victoria (the latter repealing the relevant legislation in 1998) require newspaper printing houses to include their name and address and the name and address of the publisher in the newspaper.

Section 201 of the federal Copyright Act requires that one copy of all printed material published in Australia be sent to the National Library in Canberra. In addition, each state requires that one copy of material published in the state be sent to the relevant state library.

Mechanisms of press self-regulation

The Australian Press Council, a voluntary body established in 1976 by the Australian Journalists' Association and Australia's major publishers, is the principal body which promotes press ethics in Australia.

The objects of the Press Council include the maintenance of the character of the Australian press in accordance with the highest journalistic standards and the preservation of the press's established freedom. The Press Council has a specific mandate to consider, investigate and deal with complaints about the conduct of the press as well as the conduct of persons and organisations towards the press.

The Council is funded by its constituent bodies, with the associations (country, regional and suburban) paying a certain percentage of the annual budget, and the balance being divided among publishers based on a proportional basis calculated on the circulation of all metropolitan dailies in Australia.

The Council provides an independent, efficient and free facility for hearing complaints against the press.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) now subsumes the former Australian Journalists' Association (AJA), the professional association of Australian journalists as well as its trade union. Matters relating to journalism are now the province of a division of the MEAA so that the AJA effectively continues within the larger organisation. The MEAA makes provision under its registered rules for the observance by its members of a Journalists' Code of Ethics. The Code is enforced by branch Judiciary Committees from each of which appeal lies first to a branch Appeals Committee and finally to the Federal Council of the MEAA.

The Advertising Standards Board was established recently by advertisers to deal with complaints on questions of taste in advertising (in all media). It replaces the defunct Advertising Standards Council which dealt with all complaints about advertising, including questions of truth.

(For the electronic media, complaints can be made to the broadcaster and, if not dealt with satisfactorily, can be referred to the Australian Broadcasting Authority or, in the case of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, to its Independent Complaints Review Panel.)

Jack R Herman

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