Page 667 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 2018
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I will repeat some further observations that I have made. I think that the era of newspapers seeking to tell their readers how to vote should end.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MR BARR: That should end. Regardless of whether newspapers are endorsing the progressive side of politics or the conservative side of politics, that process, in 2018, whereby newspapers seek to influence how their readers and how voters should vote—
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, allow the Chief Minister to be heard in silence, please.
MR BARR: That should be a practice of the past.
Opposition members interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Members of the opposition, please: silence.
Mr Hanson: Outrageous!
MADAM SPEAKER: The request for silence? What, Mr Hanson? Can you please sit in silence?
MR BARR: Madam Speaker, there will always be a variety of views, and we are hearing some of them in the chamber this morning, about editorial independence and the approach of media organisations. But frankly, Madam Speaker, in situations of such concentrated media ownership, with near monopolies in certain sections of the media, the responsibility for even-handedness and for an editorial charter like that of the ABC to be applied across the board could not be clearer. It could not be clearer.
Mrs Jones: Are you talking about government censorship—government censorship of the press?
MR BARR: The nature of the interjections that we are hearing from those opposite fundamentally misunderstands the point I am making, fundamentally misunderstands that point.
Madam Speaker, through this debate in recent times there have been a series of extended commentaries in relation to observations of the demographic nature of the audiences for particular media outlets.
Mrs Jones: I think you started that conversation, actually.
Mr Parton: You are the one who brought it up.
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