CANBERRA – Australia’s government may review media laws in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s British paper the News of the World, its prime minister said yesterday, as an influential party demanded an inquiry into media ownership and regulation.
“To see some of the things that have been done to intrude on people’s privacy, particularly in moments of grief and stress in the family lives – I’ve truly been disgusted to see it,” Julia Gillard told Australia’s National Press Club.
“I anticipate that we will have a discussion amongst parliamentarians about this, about the best review and way of dealing with all of this.”
Australia’s Greens party called on Wednesday for a parliamentary inquiry into media ownership and regulation. It is questioning Australian-born Mr Murdoch’s domination of the country’s newspapers. “Following events in Fleet Street [the British media], it is very clear that here in Australia there’s sufficient concern about the potential unrolling of similar events,” Greens senator Bob Brown told a news conference.
Mr Murdoch’s News Ltd dominates the Australian newspaper industry, commanding nearly three-quarters of daily metropolitan newspaper circulation.
The Australian arm of News Corp on Wednesday said it was launching an investigation into whether there had been any wrongdoing at its editorial operations in recent years.
Yesterday, it denied speculation in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that Rebekah Brooks, at the centre of the hacking storm as former News of the World editor and as chief executive of News International, might take over one of Mr Murdoch’s interests in Australia.
“That’s not true,” News Ltd spokesman Greg Baxter said of the Telegraph report.
The Greens have criticised Murdoch press coverage of plans for a carbon tax to fight climate change, claiming it was campaigning against the tax. Mr Brown suggested Australian media law may need to include a “character test” clause for ownership and questioned the issue of foreign ownership of Australian media.
Mr Murdoch owns 150 national, capital city and suburban news brands in Australia, which include mass circulation daily tabloids in Sydney (Daily Telegraph) and Melbourne (Sun Herald) and the national daily the Australian.
He also has a 30 per cent interest in 24-hour news channel Sky News Australia. – (Reuters)