Former Australian PM Lambasts Media Law for ‘Entrenching’ Murdoch Empire
Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd claims impending media bargaining laws will entrench the power of Rupert Murdoch’s news empire.
Rudd said Australian media was undergoing a “Fox News-isation” and was breeding climate change denialism and encouraging far-right political extremism.
“The Murdoch media empire has campaigned viciously against one side of politics,” he said.
Rudd is fronting a parliamentary inquiry into media diversity after a petition he started garnered over 500,000 signatures from Australians.
Rudd announced the petition in October via Twitter, calling on the federal parliament to investigate the abuse of media monopoly, particularly in relation to Murdoch’s interests.
First published on Fri 19 Feb 2021 14.06 EST
When the outgoing head of the OECD urged countries this week to “put a big fat price on carbon”, it might not have gone down well with the Australian vying to replace him.
Mathias Cormann, one of the final four contenders to replace Ángel Gurría as OECD secretary general, was finance minister in the conservative government that abolished a carbon pricing scheme that had driven cuts in Australia’s emissions.
Despite his record of campaigning against the previous Labor government’s “job-destroying carbon tax”, Cormann has put environmental action at the centre of his OECD campaign, arguing the body “can and must provide important global leadership to drive ambitious and effective action on climate change”.
Facebook's news ban is being rolled out across Australia, and so far the tech giant is taking a pretty broad definition of "news". Here are some of the other pages that appear to have been caught up in the stoush between Facebook and the federal government.