Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Communication policy
Late in the 20th century and early in the 21st, three major changes occurred.
The telecommunications market was liberalised, privatised then partly renationalised.
New entrants were allowed to offer services and build their own
infrastructure and the government’s shareholding in the incumbent Telstra was
sold in three tranches from 1997 to 2006. From 2009, the National Broadband
Network (NBN) returned the federal government to a large, direct role in the
local telecommunications market. Second, foreign ownership restrictions were
progressively removed, and particular transactions accommodated, in ways that
permitted a higher level of overseas participation in media sectors that had been
largely controlled by Australians. Third, from the mid-1990s, the internet transformed
the social and economic processes of communication. This eventually
affected all people and enterprises. For Australian policy makers, one of the most
important features of the new digital economy and society was that largely new
commercial organisations came to dominate it – Facebook, Apple, Alphabet/
Google, Amazon, Netflix and Microsoft. They became the world’s biggest corporations,
measured by market capitalisation, and they were based outside Australia.
This changed some of the targets and instruments of Australian communications
policy, though many of its broad themes have endured.
What’s at stake?
Communication raises at least four issues for politics and public policy. Citizens,
consumers, enterprises, defence forces, elected representatives and others require
information that is carried over communications networks. Those networks also
convey ideas, images, sounds and stories that shape culture and identity. Communications
industries contribute directly to employment and economic activity and
provide vital inputs to other industries.
One of the first things the Australian parliament did after Federation in 1901
was create an information powerhouse by merging the six state post, telegraph and
telephone administrations into a single enterprise run by a federal department. More
thanhalfthetotalsumappropriatedunderthefirstConsolidated Revenue Act, No. 3
1901 (Cth) was allocated to it. When television was introduced in 1956, expectations
about its cultural impact quickly prompted demands for policy measures to ensure
thisnewmediumdidmoreforAustralianculturethanthetinylocalfilmindustry
at the time. The scale and value of equipment purchased for telecommunications
networks encouraged governments to support local manufacturing, initially by tariff
protection and later by requiring carriers to have industry development plans. Since
then industry policy in the sector has continued but it has been redirected towards
creative, service industries rather than equipment manufacturing.
Digital networks have accentuated the role of communications as an input to
other industries. Recent analysis of investment in Australia from the mid-1960s to
2011 found a higher rate of return for information and communications technology
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