By Peter Boyle
Any day now, a decision in the boardroom of the ANZ bank could leave most of the mass media in Australia in the hands of two powerful and wealthy men — Rupert Murdoch (archenemy of British print workers and readers with taste) and Kerry Packer (the financial backer of Chief Buthelezi, whose Inkatha movement is drenching South Africa's black townships in blood).
If Packer's Tourang consortium becomes the successful bidder for Fairfax (and the Hawke Labor government has smoothed the way for "mate" Packer), the mainstream newspaper market will be shared between Murdoch and Packer.
Murdoch will continue to own or control the only national daily newspaper, the Australian, both dailies in Brisbane and Adelaide, and the only daily in Darwin and Hobart.
In addition, he owns eight of the 11 Sunday papers, several regional papers and 66 suburban papers, giving him control of 69.6% of capital city and national newspaper circulation, 77.5% of Sunday newspaper circulation, 17% of regional newspaper circulation and 50.5% of suburban newspaper circulation, according to statistics compiled by the Communications Law Centre and published in the August 5 Age.
Packer will control the prestige dailies, Age and Sydney Morning Herald, the Financial Review, two Sunday papers, three regional newspapers, 16 suburban newspapers and 49.1% of all magazine circulation, three metropolitan TV stations, three regional TV stations, one metropolitan radio station and seven regional radio stations.
Even if Packer does not get the Fairfax empire, media ownership in this country will still be the most heavily monopolised in the Western world, with 85% of all print circulation divided (unevenly) between four owners. In addition, just five corporations share all metropolitan TV stations and most of the regionals.
Power and favours
Monopolisation of the media means a concentration of awesome power in the hands of the media tycoons. Politicians crawl up to them, as Hawke does, even if some politicians, like Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam, are prepared to grumble in public from the comfortable safety of parliamentary retirement.
Whitlam came to power in 1972 with Murdoch's support, and went out of office largely thanks to a media campaign by the same. Fraser came in with media support and repaid his debt by weakening the Trade Practices Act in 1977 to allow a greater concentration of media ownership (a step he now claims to regret).
The Hawke government came to power promising to do something about media monopolisation. Multi-media corporations had come to dominate in the 1970s. For example, the Fairfax group owned two daily newspapers, a TV and radio station in Sydney. In Melbourne, the Herald and Weekly Times owned two metropolitan dailies and a TV and radio
However, Hawke's intervention boosted concentration of media ownership. According to the then chief executive of the HWT, John D'Arcy, the new rules favoured "Mr Hawke's mates, Mr Packer and Mr Murdoch. I just wonder what the pay-off is."
Murdoch was forced to sell off his television stations, but he took over the HWT, giving him control of 69.76% of metropolitan daily newspaper circulation.
Packer then held on to Channel Nine and gained dominance over the magazine market, which was exempted from cross-media ownership rules.
Both Murdoch and Packer are notorious for their overt editorial intervention. The ongoing federal parliamentary inquiry into the media is hearing many examples of editorial intervention by these two owners.
The Fairfax stable includes the Age and Sydney Morning Herald, whose staff claim that they have enjoyed relative editorial independence but fear that all this could change if Packer takes over.
Debt
A major impetus for the latest round of concentration of media ownership is the sea of debt that all the media empires are sailing on. Fairfax has $1.3 billion in debts.
Murdoch's News Corp, which remains precariously afloat, has a colossal $11 billion in debt worldwide, nearly four times the annual turnover of the entire newspaper industry in Australia. The debt is largely the residue of the great merger and takeover battles of the 1980s.
Packer was one of the biggest winners from the 1980s takeovers. He sold Channel Nine to Alan Bond for $1 billion in 1987 and then bought it back, when Bond crashed, for $200 million in cash and $200 million in shares.
His Bahamas-based empire pays little tax and, apart from the media, has interests in entertainment, sports, toxic waste disposal, toxic chemical manufacture, styrofoam packaging, telephone information services, ship building, military aircraft manufacture and, some say, even seedier enterprises. He is also one of Australia's largest landowners.