Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, , 4:06:28 to 5:08:23
Discussion on fairness, free speech, and the impact of ownership structures on government media funding.
Topics: Human rights, Grants administration
Speakers: Senator The Hon Sarah Henderson, Senator Nita Green, Senator Varun Ghosh, Unknown Speaker
But Minister, Optus is foreign-owned, and yet we provide very substantial funding to opt us through regional connectivity programs. I will put to you that you've made this decision. The government has made this decision uh very deliberately to exclude uh parts of the media sector it does not like. And that was prejudicial and that is not appropriate. If if you respect free speech, then surely uh organizations and media companies under the news corp banner should be included in these grant programs.
It's not about free speech and um uh as we've said, the the news bargaining incentive is a different um system, so they will be included in that. This is a grant um assistance program. Um the foreign-owned corporation that is news corp was excluded. Um we will um uh you can make the case for news corp if you wish. I think that's the thing.
I make the I make the case for fairness.
It's got nothing to do with fairness, all right.
And the whole speech of the year. Um Senator Henderson, but very Senator Henderson come to order.
This is a point now.
Senator Henderson.
Well, Senators both come to order, please. Now we've gone over time. Are we in a position to release otherwise we're gonna go to the lunch break and we'll come back with some further questions? No, then in which case um we'll break for lunch now for an hour and we'll come back on outcome five. Thank you very much. Mr.