The Labor Party in Australia – mired in an economic slump, popular revulsion after ripping up a promise to voters not to impose a carbon tax, and fervent speculation that Prime Minister Julia Gillard could be dumped by her own caucus before Election Day (September 14) – has decided now is a perfect time to impose restrictions on press freedom.
The Australian (h/t Andrew Bolt) has the gory details…
Bills introduced into parliament yesterday revealed the Public Interest Media Advocate would have broad powers to punish publishers if it decided that they no longer complied with undefined “community standards” or changing circumstances. There would be no appeal to the courts on the merits of the advocate’s decision…
Yowza.
The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, wants this enacted ASAP, and The Australian thinks it knows why…
The extent of the Communications Minister’s ambition to control the contents of this and other newspapers is now becoming clear, as are Stephen Conroy’s reasons for rushing his legislation through parliament so fast it will hardly touch the sides. If Senator Conroy prevails – and he has already told us it is his way or the highway – his hand-picked Public Interest Media Advocate will be up and running in time for the September 14 election with extraordinary powers to determine what is, or what is not, in the “public interest”.
The ministers’s notion of what is in the public interest, and the general public’s notion, will no doubt differ. We doubt, for instance, that the senator would see Hedley Thomas’s continued investigation into the Prime Minister’s personal and professional relationship with a disgraced former union boss as being in the public interest. The public, on the other hand, probably does.
After all, what Cabinet Minister wouldn’t want to start muzzling the press six months before an election?
Amidst all the arguments about the sequester, Virginia’s Plan ’13 From Outer Space, the fate of the Republican Party, and everything else, we might want to pay more attention to the assault on free speech Down Under…in no small part because it is spreading to other parts of the British Commonwealth, too (Spectator Coffee House).
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