Australian media needs regulation: Ray Finkelstein

THE judge who presided over the government inquiry into media regulation says that even with no evidence of misbehaviour, media regulation is needed.

THE judge who presided over the government inquiry into media regulation has told a parliamentary committee examining the vexed issue that even with no evidence of misbehaviour, media regulation is necessary.

Former federal court judge Ray Finkelstein, who was appointed by the federal government to chair an inquiry into print media in late 2011, has appeared at the public hearings into the proposed media reforms and given for the first time his view of the proposed legislation.

Mr Finkelstein told the inquiry, led by Labor senator Doug Cameron, that examinations of media regulation "could get terribly distracted if the object of the exercise was to look for press failings."

He said he had found in his report that the common ground with newspaper proprietors was "they wield enormous power and it struck me as being very odd that any group in society that wields enormous power should not be wholly or substantially regulated."

"There are no powerful groups in society that can come along to governments or anybody and say 'we can do what we like when we like and there's nothing you should do about it'."

He described this attitude as "a very surprising approach."

"I suggested [in my report] even if there were no evidence of press misconduct or misbehaviour, however you characterise it, there was good reason for any powerful institution to be regulated. And part of that process was the press regard that to be true because they regulate themselves.

"I would raise that as a central issue, whether or not there was a catalogue of misbehaviour, or misconduct or breaches."

In his report, released almost a year ago, Mr Finkelstein recommended that print and online news should come under direct federal government oversight with the creation of a statutory regulator with the power to prosecute media companies in the courts.

Failing that he recommended an increase in funding and powers to the current regulatory body, the Australian Press Council, a conclusion closer to the central part of the current raft of proposed legislation.

Asked by Senator Cameron if he felt that legislation was undemocratic, that it will "destroy freedom of the press and will lead us to some authoritarian society where the minister can direct editorial content and the content of the media," Mr Finkelstein was dismissive.

"Most of the topics dealt with in the legislation are dealt with by current codes of conduct," he said. "So the legislation... does nothing new in that regard."

He was then asked by Sen Cameron if he felt "as if you are a pawn in the end of democracy in this country, to assist in the abolition of democracy and the end of free speech?"

Mr Finkelstein replied: "This bill does nothing towards ending democracy and it is a relatively minor imposition on press freedom and no imposition on free speech."

He said self-regulation, through the APC, had failed.