Peter Costello dismissive of media inquiry

Nine chairman Peter Costello has questioned the value of the proposed royal commission into media diversity.

Nine chairman Peter Costello. Picture: AAP

Nine chairman Peter Costello has questioned the value of the proposed royal commission into media diversity, and taken a veiled swipe at former prime minsters Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, both of whom have publicly supported such an inquiry.

“Do I think that a royal commission into the media is going to discover something hitherto unknown? No, I don’t,” Mr Costello said after the media company’s annual general meeting on Thursday.

“The media is scrutinised every single day. You know, there are multiple outlets, they scrutinise each other. This idea that somehow there’s some sort of lurking factor that nobody’s ever discovered before — I rate the probability as very low.”

Mr Costello also said a separate Senate inquiry into media ­diversity, established by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, would be expensive and unlikely to yield worthwhile information.

“We personally, as a company, we don’t want to be tied down in endless inquiries and the costs that are involved in these things. But if we are called upon to give any evidence, of course we will,” he said. “But the chances of anything new coming out of it, I would rate as very low. And we also think that the move by former prime ministers to inquire into our (industry) … they think we’re unsympathetic (but that) says as much about them as it says about the media.”

The motion for the inquiry passed unopposed in the Senate on Wednesday. The Senate inquiry will also look into the dominance of Facebook and Google.