Conroy’s legacy
Last week Stephen Conroy, minister for broadband, communications, and the digital economy stepped down after five years in the role. But what mark has he left on the media industry? In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Megan Reynolds investigates.
He’s been compared to Hitler, Stalin and Mao, while others have praised him for breaking ground on the national broadband network and established monopolies on telecommunications and broadcasting rights. The man behind the media, Stephen Conroy, last week stepped down from his role as the minister for broadband, communications, and the digital economy, after five and a half years in a job that both gave him power over the media and left him paralysed without its support.
Conroy’s lasting mark on the media could have been the Finkelstein inquiry, an independent investigation he ordered into media regulation that called for a new government-funded body to oversee the print, online and broadcast media. But the findings divided both journalists and politicians and were swallowed by the much larger convergence review that looked at broader issues around the digitisation of the media landscape.
Fairfax and News Limited strongly opposed the resulting media reforms and nothing was made of them for more than a year until Conroy proposed a package of six non-negotiable bills in March and called for them to be voted on within ten days.
“Australia does not have explicit freedom of speech in any constitutional or statutory declaration of rights, with the exception of political speech which is protected from criminal prosecution at common law per Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....#Australia
It’s amazing what ten seconds on a search engine will get you.
Thank God Steve Conroy is out…he is so far removed from the digital landscape it was ridiculous.
Like the rest of the Labor team, he couldn’t manage a chook raffle in a country pub. His legacy will be enormous debt. The NBN is a disgrace, it is behind its own deadlines, over budget and most probably technology out-of-date before it gets connected to any significant number of homes. Just another giant stuff-up by this inept group of fools, and in this case Conroy.
@ wang
I’m glad to see the end of Conroy but saying the NBN is a huge disgrace, well thats a bit harsh.
It will be out-of-date?, I’m assuming you’re not an IT infrastructure expert, neither am I so lets trust the one in the know and they seem to think that fibre optics is the way to go, and please note your post was delivered by a copper network that has lasted 100 years, its in bad shape to be sure, but to say a new network will be out-of-date before its finished, well you really should go back to writing fairytales or work as Tony Abbott’s speech writer.
Being over budget and slow to deliver, well sheez show me a nationwide project that wasn’t hell the article even addressed that….
“The only valid disappointment would be that it seems to be rolling out slower than everybody had hoped it would, but I can’t think of any private system that has been on time or on price either.”
I’m gonna defend the NBN and say its Conroys only saving grace.
Side note, I’m on Telstra cable, its the closest thing to the NBN and personally I wouldn’t go back to ADSL, We can have the whole family streaming youtube at High Def and no one has disconnections, slow buffering or dropouts….try that on your copper network!