Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Communication policy
influence of their owners. Former editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times,
Les Carlyon, described Australia’s media policy in the 1980s and 1990s as ‘founded
on notions of mates [especially Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch] and enemies
[especially the old owners of the Fairfax and Herald and Weekly Times newspapers],
just like the third world’. 21 Thedeclineinthepowerofoldmedia’sownerswas
especially apparent through the long process of switching broadcast television to
digital transmission from 2001–13, which freed a large amount of radiofrequency
spectrum for mobile broadband. 22 The technological migration enabled both an
economic and a political transition.
Second, the libertarianism of the early internet has moderated. In 1996, Electronic
Frontiers Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow asked the ‘Governments
of the Industrial World’ to leave cyberspace alone: ‘You are not welcome among
us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.’ 23 Since then, as the internet has
been integrated into almost every aspect of life, communication and commerce,
governments have moved to treat online and offline activities more consistently,
even in areas like taxation and content regulation which were once argued to be
firmly off-limits. The ACMA’s chair, Nerida O’Loughlin, said in 2018: ‘Government
regulation has started, particularly in Europe. I think the days of saying we won’t do
anything because of a US-based view of free speech are well and truly over.’ 24
How policy is made for communications
Communications policy uses three main tools: law, money and ownership. It is
made by governments and parliaments that make and amend laws; regularly decide
to allocate money through annual budget processes; and occasionally decide to
create, redesign, privatise or otherwise disband the activities of public institutions.
Laws can directly prohibit or require certain behaviour, or permit it subject to
conditions. They can also create markets for commodities like radiofrequency
spectrum and intellectual property, and rules to be observed by anyone trading
them. Money can be allocated to individuals or organisations as grants, investments,
loans, minimum guarantees or tax concessions to meet the cost of doing
particular things: making a movie, erecting a mobile phone tower, conducting
research about consumer needs or advocacy on behalf of specific types of
consumers. Institutions can be created to carry out public missions with varying
degrees of independence from the governments that establish, fund and oversee
them: public broadcasters, a national library, a national broadband network.
21 Cited in Barr 2000, 1.
22 Given 2009.
23 Barlow 1996.
24 Day 2018.
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