Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Communication policy
the media, is part of the field itself, not just the conduit for disseminating
information about it. Citizens who are the ultimate focus of all policy need to
be conceptualised also as consumers, users and audiences for communications
services.
An important addition to the list of public policy institutions in communications
are international organisations like the Universal Postal Union, International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), and World Intellectual Property Organisation
(WIPO) – all of which are United Nations agencies – and the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN). Domestic policy has to be co-ordinated with these organisations. For
example, local laws have to be amended to translate commitments made in
international agreements; auDA manages the .au domain space allocated through
ICANN, the non-profit corporation, incorporated in California that, among other
things, manages the internet’s global domain name system. These institutions reflect
the longstanding international dimensions of communications policy. From the
earliest days of postal and telegraph services, protocols were needed to manage
and share the costs and revenues of delivering physical articles across national
borders and interconnecting electronic networks. The ITU now also co-ordinates
the international management of radiofrequency spectrum and satellite orbits as
well as standardisation of technologies for things like internet access, transport
protocols, home networking and video compression. WIPO and the WTO oversee
the global agreements put in place over many decades to manage intellectual
property and trade. They also handle disputes that arise under them.
These global arrangements are complex and overlapping: there are many
regional (like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement) and bilateral (like the
Australia–New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Agreement) trade agreements
as well as the WTO’s multilateral ones, and trade agreements now often include
detailed provisions about intellectual property that are not necessarily consistent
with WIPO agreements. Alongside these longstanding international dimensions,
networked digital technologies have accentuated the global nature of many other
policy issues. Global communication is not new – Australians have always read
books, listened to music and watched movies from elsewhere and sent messages
over networks owned and controlled by overseas-based organisations – but the
current phase has rendered nationally based policy measures less effective in areas
like taxation of multinational corporate activity, competition, consumer protection
and policing child pornography.
High-level public policy goals for communications in Australia are expressed in
the objects of legislation, the outcomes specified for government funding programs
and the charters of public institutions. Statutory objects emphasise several broad
areas: first, equitable access to reliable basic services and innovation in the
development of new services; second, content that reflects Australian identity,
character and cultural diversity, covers issues of local significance, treats matters
of public interest fairly and accurately, and respects community standards; and an
527