ACCC boss outlines media regulation future

The head of Australia’s consumer watchdog Graeme Samuel will speak at UQ on May 19 about the future for media regulation in Australia.

The chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said much of the debate about the future of Australian media outlets had missed the point.

“The job of regulation now is not so much determining how many TV stations there are or who can own what, but ensuring that people aren’t locking up the content rights,” Mr Samuel said.

“People are accessing a lot of content by the internet now and with the roll out of faster internet speeds, people will soon be bypassing and many young people already are, the traditional media and getting the content they want themselves via the internet.”

Mr Samuel said the privatisation of Telstra was not a matter for the ACCC but it was crucial that whoever owned Telstra, that competitors continued to be allowed to access its network to be able to provide competition in all areas of telecommunications.

“Telstra is such a dominant carrier and has control over most of the infrastructure and it is our job to ensure that rival players can get their equipment installed or get access to Telstra’s network so they can compete with Telstra.

“This will become even more important as people shift away from TV and radio and move more into the internet to get their content.”

He said media convergence was not good or bad, but it would give us more control over how we viewed content and more power to groups who controlled the content.

Mr Samuel is giving the second Henry Mayer lecture in the Abel Smith Theatre (building 23), UQ St Lucia, from 5.30pm to 6.30pm.

The Henry Mayer Lecture commemorates Professor Henry Mayer, who in 1974 founded Media International Australia (MIA) one of the premier academic journals on media.

The lecture is organised by UQ's Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, in conjunction with MIA.

Media: contact Ms Lin Enright (phone: 02 6243 1108, email: lin.enright@accc.gov.au) or Miguel Holland at UQ Communications on (phone: 07 3365 2619, email: m.holland@uq.edu.au)