The Weekend Australian September 6-7 1997
By George Megalogenis
John Howard had always seen media ownership policy as one of the many areas that would allow him to claim he was a better prime minister than Paul Keating.
Unlike Keating, Howard promised he would deliver a “non mogul-specific” media policy that placed the national interest ahead of the personal interests of newspaper and television proprietors.
But the longer the debate dragged on, the more obvious it became that Howard was no different to Keating as he tried to cut his own media deals.
After almost a year of self inflicted pain, Howard finally came to the realisation two weeks ago that he could not touch Labour’s cross-media rules without being painted as doing a favour for Kerry Packer.
The paradox for Howard in the end was that the only way he could stop people from seeing him as just another Keating was to retain the very regime which he said Keating used to reward media mates, and punish media enemies.
It was a relieved Cabinet on Monday which embraced Howard’s recommendation to drop the issue to allow the Government to concentrate on policies that voters really did care about, such as jobs.
The hole Howard had dug for himself on media policy was summed up by a senior minister recently: “The trouble with the whole debate inevitably is because it is still a concentrated market, any changes will benefit some and disadvantage others.
“People then say “Ah, because this is the result of that, then this must be your starting point.”
Every reform option which the government floated appeared to clear the path for packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Limited to take over the Fairfax newspaper group, while retaining control of the Nine network.
The problem was not that the opposition parties in the Senate, Fairfax, News Limited, or the Seven network saw it this way - although their hostility did contribute to Howard’s backdown this week.
The real concern was that the Government’s own ranks both at Cabinet and backbench level - also saw the exercise as Packer-specific.
Howard himself fed this perception by telling colleagues he thought the Fairfax papers lacked direction. Howard believed the Sydney Morning Herald, for example, was not fulfilling its potential of becoming a quality” small-c conservative” broadsheet like The Times in London.
Early on in the process, Howard and Communications Minister Richard Alston decided the way to counter the inevitable claims of bias towards Packer was to give Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, which publishes The Weekend Australian, a share of the media spoils.
The economics, as well as the politics, of the issue demanded that the cross-media rules preventing someone could not be reformed in isolation.
The foreign ownership rules, which restricted News from expanding further in Australia, also had to be looked at. But unlike Keating, Howard could not strike a balance that placated both Packer and Murdoch.
Every model that Howard and Alston came up with gave Packer an easier run at taking over Fairfax than it gave Murdoch at controlling Seven. Insiders now agree that Howard effectively killed his own reform drive on April 30 when he went on Melbourne radio station 3AW to talk up the Packer cause. The Prime Minister said then there were three choices on media policy - do nothing; open up the media to all comers; or reform the cross media rules while retaining the existing controls on foreigners.(Interestingly, Howard did not mention option four which he had discussed with Murdoch - relaxing both cross-media and foreign ownership controls).
Howard said the first option was not on because it would leave the Fairfax share register in an unstable position, while the second “could result in all of the media in Australia owned by foreign interests”.
Howard thus made it clear he supported option three which would have delivered Fairfax to Packer.
Two days later, details of Howard’s earlier discussion with Murdoch - in which the Prime Minister suggested News “surrender” some newspaper titles in exchange for a higher stake in Seven - was leaked to a Fairfax newspaper.
Howard hit the roof. Confirming the ill-feeling at the time, his office commented: “The point is you can have a conversation with News Limited and a distorted version comes out.”
But Howard’s anger with the Murdoch camp paled compared with the anger which government MPs were now directing at him.
The combination of Howard’s 3AW performance and his talks with Murdoch sent alarm bells ringing through the Government backbench.
The Coalition communications committee, until then a passive player in the debate forced Howard to delay the issue until the second half of the year.
From that point on, Howard’s media reforms were doomed. When Howard relented this week, his backbench strongly opposed, and Labor and the Australian Democrats were itching to obstruct any package in the Senate.
The one consolation for Howard was that his decision to call off his reform drive for this parliamentary term suggests he never gave a personal undertaking to deliver Fairfax to Packer. Otherwise, he’d still be fighting.