Pre-election jitters in Canberra

Is the Howard government having second thoughts, asks MARGARET SIMONS LET the games begin! Probably, perhaps, and before too long. Maybe. Australia?s media companies are all cashed up and raring to go, but Senator Helen Coonan has yet to say when she plans to fire the gun and proclaim the new media ownership laws, triggering a flurry of takeovers and mergers. Meanwhile Shadow Communications Minister Stephen Conroy?s office claims ?active consideration? is being given to the question of what to do if the laws are not proclaimed and Labor comes to power. Proclamation can?t occur until the Australian Communications and Media Authority has finished its homework. There are two parts to this: completion of a register of ownership, and work to do with the licence conditions for regional broadcasters to ensure levels of local content and declaration of cross ownership following mergers. ACMA told Senate Estimates late last month that this work would be completed within weeks. Yet, under questioning, Coonan would commit only to proclamation sometime this year. ?We?re not entering into any speculation on timelines,? a spokeswoman said. So is the Howard government having second thoughts? A media feeding frenzy, fuelled by anonymous foreign private equity cash may be the last thing the government needs in an election year when there are already sensitivities about iconic local companies falling into foreign hands. On the other hand the government can hardly afford to make enemies of the big media companies by leaving them all cashed up with nowhere to go. It would be extraordinary if the government, having come this far, squibbed it. Fifteen billion dollars of media deals hang in the balance. Let?s recap on the contenders cashed up, poised and waiting for the starter?s gun. Both Kerry Stokes? Channel Seven and the Packer organisation have brought in private equity cash through deals that can?t be fully consummated until the laws go through. Both organisations will be buyers ? though Packer may be more interested in casinos than media. Channel Ten?s foreign owners have hung out a ?for sale? sign. The O?Reilly family?s Independent News and Media, also fuelled by private equity, is trying to buy out the shares it doesn?t own in APN with plans to use that company as a base for expansion. This week the O?Reilly family?s Dublin-based PR flak declined to rule out a bid for Fairfax ? or for anything else. The Macquarie Bank is interested in expansion ? perhaps in the WIN regional television network and other regional broadcasting assets. Fairfax and Rural Press are planning to merge ? if another deal doesn?t pip that at the post. Telstra, Fairfax and others are awaiting the auction of the two new datacasting licences. And beneath the radar of most media commentary, foreign players are quietly flexing. Javier Moll, whose Prensa Iberica is a leading publisher in Spain and Portugal and who already owns the Adelaide Review, is quietly building a national stable of street magazines. There may be other plans. Moll has long hungered for his own Australian metropolitan daily newspaper. Meanwhile Labor has said precisely nothing about what it will do should it come to power with the media laws not yet proclaimed. Shadow Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy has condemned what Coonan has done without offering an alternative plan. Conroy?s office promises a comprehensive media policy will emerge after Labor?s federal conference at the end of April. Perhaps someone is beavering away on it, but Labor insiders say little work has been done on the detail so far. It is not seen as one of the issues that will turn the votes that Labor needs. Some indication of the quality of thought in Labor ranks was contained in the 2 March announcement of $3 billion of planned cost cutting should the Opposition come to power. Hidden down the bottom of the media release was a line item of $22.1 million in savings to be garnered by reversing Minister Helen Coonan?s decisions to create Digital Australia and increase funding for the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Digital Australia is to be the main agency charged with the vital job of pushing Australia towards a digital broadcasting future. Its role is outlined here (PDF). Meanwhile ACMA already has a reputation for slowness, particularly in dealing with public complaints, and has recently been given lots of extra homework. Mark Day detailed the existing workload in the Australian, and this is just the start. Once Coonan?s media ownership regulations are proclaimed, ACMA?s workload will balloon as media mergers are proposed and need to be assessed. ACMA and the competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission are already gearing up, announcing plans to share information as merger proposals are announced. So what would Labor do instead? When I quizzed Conroy?s office on the detail there was initially confusion about whether the plan was to ditch Digital Australia or to get the industry to fund it. Once that was sorted, Conroy?s office said that Digital Australia would be ditched because its functions could be handled within the Department of Communications from existing resources. The creation of Digital Australia was mere ?face saving? after ten years of government bungling, Conroy?s spokesman said. There is something in that. The bungling is undeniable, mainly under the watch of Coonan?s predecessor, Senator Richard Alston. But as for ACMA, Conroy?s office says the reason for its increased workload is the minister\u27s ?obsession with ducking the tough decisions and hand balling political issues to ACMA? This would not be the case under a Labor government.? We are entitled to be cynical. While there is truth in the line about ducking tough decisions there is no indication from Conroy as to how he expects ACMA to do all its current work plus the extra resulting from media mergers without more resources. Surely Conroy is not suggesting that the minister should decide which media mergers are allowed and which should be blocked? That would be a risky and unwarranted intervention in functions better carried out independently of politics. It is a bit rich for Conroy to run the ?ducking? line when Labor has failed to say what it will do if it comes to power and the media ownership laws have not been proclaimed. Now there?s a tough one, and so far it is Labor that is doing the ducking. The issue is a minefield. Labor can?t afford to make media enemies either, but a new Labor government would have to move quickly if it wanted to stop the laws. If not proclaimed, they will automatically come into force on 1 January 2008. That means a new Labor government would need to come up with fresh legislation very fast, and get it through the Senate, where it is most unlikely to have a majority. Roll on national conference. If Conroy can?t come up with something gutsy and workable after that, we will all know who is the duck. Stephen Allen, media analyst of Fusion Strategy, thinks there is little chance that the government will squib the proclamation, but suggests the government?s poor poll results could mean delay, precisely to make the media companies nervous and enable ?the calling in of favours? as close as possible to the election date. Meanwhile it?s worth remembering that just about all the major ownership moves so far have taken the analysts by surprise. The truth is nobody really knows what will happen. Not even, to her chagrin, Senator Helen Coonan ? who was once foolish enough to say she didn?t think there would be big changes as the result of her laws. The only thing we can be sure of is that she got that wrong. ? Margaret Simons is a freelance journalist and author. Her new book about the media will be published later this year by Penguin. Photo: Senator Helen Coonan. AAP Image/Mark Graha