Hi Jon J,

Doesn't matter if the print media totally shifts to internet or other delivery modes.

The Government's broadcasting "policy" is currently a support system for Murdoch's media (including newspaper) interests.

Murdoch or his many staffers can ring up the Minister or the Communications Department demanding a briefing on sensitive matters and Murdoch will get it. see http://www.communications.gov.au/television/commercial_tv

The Government, after all, relied on Murdoch, to get elected. If Murdoch shifts his allegiance to Labor - Labor will win next.

The only thing government should have to do with the media is nothing.

They should get the hell out of the way, closing their ABC as they go.

God the left must be desperate when they have to use the children to try to push their propaganda.

Well, David, who do you propose as the thought policeman?
600 years ago it used to b the Pope who decided what was good or bad, biased or fair. Wrong thoughts led to a lovely death by fire at the stake.
In 1498 the Pope issued an edict that Exodus 20;18 be enforced:= "Thou shall suffer a witch to live." that was followed by thousands of deaths at the stake, predominantly little old ladies. Without a welfare net single women scratched a living by playing on superstitions of the ignorant populace, casting curses, "curing" ills, selling love potions. Dissatisfied customers resorted to the ancient equivalent of the Consumer Affairs Bureau= i.e the stake and lots of dry wood.

What arrogance for you seek to have anyone dictate how other people are to think and to express themselves!

I see we have a perfectly formed little lefty in secondary student, David. He'll go on to parrot even more such stuff when he gets to university and finds everybody there agrees with his lefty views. One day he'll pop out into the real world and, if he's as smart as he seems, he'll flush everything he believes down the dunny and start again.

He could start with simple freedom of speech, the most fundamental human right that is everybody's ... even Rupert's.

He may even learn that his idea of giving power over the press to government has led to one or two little mishaps in the past.

The author is obviously a little behind the times. He no longer has an incompetent Labor government to cover up for, so punishing dissenting voices is not quite so fashionable.

If he is determined to deal with bias, perhaps he could acknowledge that Murdoch's media publish a diversity of voices, while Fairfax has driven out pretty much all of the rational right, and the ABC has so little interest in balance they have driven away 90% of the Australian public. Apparently their ethics are based on an imperative for moral posturing in front of their peers rather than serving truth to the public.

Which is more moral - pressing honest opinion on your own money, or taking a billion dollars from the taxes and pensions of the working people and the poor, to give six-figure salaries to moral poseurs accountable to no-one, in contravention of the founding law of your organisation?

Davids's clearest statement: "To protect democracy, governments have an obligation to detect and remove political bias within the media."

David if that were true, there would be nothing left of the ABC but a smoking crater. This idea looks like some sophomoric joke, but is a real step toward totalitarianism.

David, your assertion is false. The only part of media which our Government has an obligation to police fairness in, is the ABC, and they have failed spectacularly in that responsibility.