Channel Ten: Fifield seeking media reform
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has seized on Network Ten's financial crisis as evidence of the urgent need to overhaul media ownership laws.
Senator Fifield revealed the media reform package would be introduced to the House of Representatives on Thursday before going to the Senate next week.
"Network Ten's announcement it would enter voluntary administration is a wake up call for opponents of media reform," he said.
"The greatest threat to the diversity of the Australian media would be an Australian media organisation that didn't continue, that went out of business."
Network Ten placed into voluntary administration
Senator Fifield said "constructive" discussions were continuing with the crossbench but added Labor should not be allowed off the hook.
"The government has consistently warned for sometime that Australian media organisations are facing challenges, are facing new competitors and they need to be unshackled from the laws and regulations that were crafted in the 1980s," he said.
"The response of the opposition has consistently been over the last 18 months to seek to thwart and delay the media reforms the Coalition has in the Parliament.
Senator Fifield refused to be drawn on whether there was the real prospect of Network Ten's administrator's returning its broadcast licence if they cannot salvage the company.
Ten's plight though has failed to convince Labor, the Greens and One Nation to change their mind and support the media reform package.
Labor's communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland declined to comment while One Nation leader Pauline Hanson blamed bad management and poor programming for its woes.
Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said nothing he had heard over the past month had prompted him to re-evaluate.
"The only certain outcome is that it would result in even less media diversity than we have in Australia – already the world's most concentrated media market," he said.