ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのMalcolm Turnbull's full evidence to the Australian Senate Media Diversity Inquiry

I now welcome the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull AC, the 29th Prime Minister of Australia, appearing via video conference. I understand information on parliamentary privilege and the protection of witnesses has been provided to you. For the Hansard record, Mr Turnbull, could you please state the capacity in which you appear today?

Mr Turnbull : I'm appearing in my capacity as an Australian citizen speaking about the media and the subjects of your inquiry.

CHAIR: Wonderful. I now invite you to make an opening statement and then we will go to some questions.

Mr Turnbull : Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be appearing before the committee and I want to thank you for the initiative you've shown in holding this inquiry. I've been involved, one way or another, with the media for most of my life. In the mid-seventies I was a young political correspondent in the New South Wales parliamentary press gallery. I worked as a journalist here and in the UK. I've been involved in the business side of the media industry as an executive with Kerry Packer, as a lawyer with him, but have also been involved with a lot of very big media transactions over the years. And, of course, if you're in politics you're involved with the media, as you all know, inherently. So, over my life, I've seen a lot of changes. You've had some evidence about the changes to the media because of the rise of the internet, because of social media, because of what that's done to the advertising base of traditional media outlets, particularly newspapers. I'm very happy to discuss that, but I don't want to delay that in these opening remarks.

What I want to speak to is the way in which one media organisation in Australia, News Corp, belonging to Rupert Murdoch and his family, has profoundly changed in the way it works in our democracy. Media outlets—from time immemorial, really—always sought to achieve a broad audience. When The Sydney Morning Herald was founded, around 1840, it had on its front page the lines from Alexander Pope:

In moderation placing all my glory, while Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.

I don't think the old Fairfaxes were especially broad-minded, politically, but they knew that they needed to get the widest range of opinions, the widest range of readers, because that maximised their advertising. So mainstream media—a term that's often thrown around—generally sought to be in the mainstream, and narrowcasting was pretty limited, particularly in Australia, and largely confined to the magazine business, where you could have specialist publications.

What's happened is that the internet has enabled people to narrowcast and build very substantial commercial businesses on a relatively narrow part of the audience. This first happened in radio, then you saw it with cable subscription television and now we have got to the point where many people can effectively live in a news silo, an echo chamber, where their own views—or prejudices, more often—are simply being recycled and confirmed. This becomes an ecosystem, and there is now a market for crazy.

If you doubt the significance of this, just reflect on the damage that Murdoch's publications and outlets, particularly in the United States, have done to democracy. The 6 January sacking of the US Capitol was one of the most terrible events in American history. The last time there had been people, armed, sacking the Capitol was during the war of 1812, so this is an extraordinary thing. It underlines the divisions in America that have been, in large part, fomented and promoted by right-wing media narrowcasting to a section of the population, and in the lead of that has been Fox News. You had a large percentage—a minority, thankfully—of Americans, but, perhaps, the majority of Republican voters, who believed that Biden had stolen the election. That was a lie, as we know, but it was one that was pushed and promoted by Murdoch's media.

In Australia, a different context, we also see the impact of the way in which News Corp has evolved from being a traditional news organisation, or journalistic organisation, to one that is essentially like a political party but it's a party with only one member. You see the way in which it is used in an aggressive, partisan way to drive particular agendas, whether it is fermenting antagonism and animosity towards Muslims—something I've written about in my book—whether it is the campaign against effective action on climate change, which has been where Murdoch is the principal amplifier and promoter of that in the English speaking world, at a huge cost to all of us, and to the planet—the whole world. I know Michael Mann is talking to you later and he's literally written a book on this. He can give you chapter and verse better than I can.

You see this kind of pressure that is brought to bear again and again and again. I'm telling a roomful of politicians what you live with. You know how intimidated politicians and governments are by the way in which that political power is wielded. Only last week you will have seen the New South Wales government asked me to chair a government committee, which I agreed to do as a good citizen—it wasn't something I was busting my neck to do, but I was happy to do it—to advise on net zero emissions. A ferocious campaign was launched by the Murdoch media, particularly The Daily Telegraph, and the government crumpled. They could not take the heat. They acknowledged that. The Premier and the minister said, 'Malcolm was the best person for the job' and so forth, and we're all still friends. But the saddest thing of it all was the way Matt Kean—the minister, a good man, very committed to taking action—had to then go to The Daily Telegraph and be quoted in it saying, 'Oh, News Corp had nothing to do with this this decision'. This is like somebody who is taken down to the police station and beaten over the head until they finally sign a fake confession, the last line of which says, 'I confirm that I did so of my own free will'. This is the profound problem.

This is what I would like to discuss with you—I hope you find it interesting—I think we face a real threat to our democracy. For example, look at the way News pressured the government to then pressure Facebook and Google to hand large amounts of money to News and, of course, to other media organisations. It did look like a shakedown. Does anybody know how much those media organisations were paid? Has this committee found out? I don't think so. The reality is when the power of the Australian parliament is used to raise money in taxes, or levies or whatever, we know about it. It's in the budget papers. It's trawled through at Senate estimates. The power of you, that you represent, your parliament, our parliament, has been used to shakedown two big tech platforms, Google and Facebook, to give money to media companies, the leading protagonist of which was News Corp. We don't know what they were paid, that's apparently confidential—perhaps it's too shameful to be revealed.

So we're dealing with a very different proposition. I will summarise it like this: I grew up with newspapers, some of them leant more to the left than to the right, or more to the right than the left, but by and large they reported the news as it happened. They had opinion writers that were across the spectrum, some leaning more one way than the other. That has all changed. News Corp now is like a political party but with just one member or one family of members. That is an absolute threat to our democracy—the Americans saw it on 6 January—and nobody is holding them to account.

Rudyard Kipling once described the power of the press barons as exercising the prerogative of the harlot—power without responsibility—a bit tough on harlots, I would think. But the reality is that power has to be held accountable. This is the fundamental problem that we're facing. The most powerful political actor in Australia is not the Liberal Party or the National Party or the Labor Party; it is News Corporation, and it's utterly unaccountable, it's controlled by an American family, and their interests are no longer—if they ever were—co-extensive with our own.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Turnbull. I might go to Senator Fawcett first, then there are questions I have as chair, and then I will go to other senators.

Senator FAWCETT: I'm happy for you to lead off, Chair.

CHAIR: Okay. Mr Turnbull, you've talked about the immense influence the Murdoch press has had over issues such as climate change. You mentioned the example only a week or so ago in relation to the Hunter by-election and the climate committee that you were asked to be on. I thought some of the headlines on the front page of the Daily Tele were worth referencing: 'Mal's coal shoulder'—

Mr Turnbull : It was a classic hit, wasn't it!

CHAIR: 'Malcolm's Coal War', and it goes on. I was reading the editorial in the Daily Tele on one of those days that said 'not the right job for a nimby' in reference to putting you as chair of that New South Wales committee. That was a week of relentless media coverage. Is that what you experienced as Prime Minister?

Mr Turnbull : Well, yes, I did—it wasn't like that every day, but I've absolutely experienced bullying and standover tactics from News Corp. You could fill a library with examples of it. And everyone on this committee knows what I'm saying is true, because you've all lived through it. David Fawcett, my old colleague, has seen it over the years, as well as you. It's a way to intimidate politicians and get them to do what News or its proprietors want. I don't want to go on about my removal as Prime Minister, but I think, as everyone knows, as the record shows, News Corp were part of that conspiracy that put the coup in action. Murdoch solicited Kerry Stokes's support for it, as Kerry told me. You've just got to read the newspapers, right?And, indeed, from what Murdoch said to me directly. So the bottom line is they are very, very substantial players, but it's a very targeted political operation nowadays, and the partisanship of it is extraordinary. We haven't had a 6 January episode in Australia, thank heavens, but think about the damage that has done to America. I ask you this question: what does Vladimir Putin want to do with his operations in America? He wants to divide America and turn Americans against each other, and he wants to undermine faith in their democratic institutions. That's his agenda. That's absolutely established in the intelligence community; that's what he's been seeking to do. That is exactly what Murdoch has done—divided Americans against each other and so undermined their faith in their political institutions that a mob of thousands of people, many of them armed, stormed the Capitol, and, thank heavens, it didn't result in legislators being killed or hung or lynched, as some of them were proposing to do. We can't get away from the reality that this is enormous damage being done to our democracy. The challenge is: what do you do about it?

CHAIR: Do you believe News Corp here in Australia aims to divide the country?

Mr Turnbull : Well, it certainly does, yes. Again, we're a different country to the United States, and there are a whole lot of reasons for that—we probably don't have time. If you look at the way the News Corp tabloids, for example, regularly seek to incite animosity towards minorities, particularly Muslims. It was a huge issue while I was Prime Minister because everything I was doing was obviously designed to reinforce our success as a multicultural society. What is so frustrating is that these voices on the populist Right, particularly from Murdoch's organisation, are essentially doing the work of the terrorists. What a terrorist says to a young Muslim is: 'They hate you, they don't want you, you're not one of them. You can never be an Australian.' That's the message. The counterargument to that—this is obvious—is to say: 'You are one of us, you are an Australian, we're a multicultural society, we love you and respect you. All faiths, all races, all religions are welcome here and part of our multicultural society.'

Ultimately you've got to judge people's policies and programs by their consequences. I'm saying that it is self-evident that the way the Murdoch press has operated both here and in the US has been absolutely adverse to our national interest. In the US their agenda appears to be effectively the same—I'm not saying it's co-ordinated or motivated—as that of America's most trenchant adversaries.

CHAIR: Can I ask you about your engagement with News Corp and Murdoch when you were Prime Minister? Did you ever receive phone calls or requests for meetings to discourage you from following through on a particular policy agenda? What was your engagement with News Corp like as Prime Minister?

Mr Turnbull : I'm probably in a slightly different situation to most Australian politicians because I've known Rupert Murdoch and his family for a very, very long time. I first met Rupert—I think it would have been around 1976 or something like that, I've known him for a very long time; well over 45 years plus. Basically, they have an agenda—

CHAIR: What is their agenda, Mr Turnbull?
Mr Turnbull : Their agenda is obviously that they are opposed to effective action on climate change—that's a hot button for them. They are obviously very supportive of the kind of right-wing agenda in the United States. Trump was, to some extent, a creation of Rupert Murdoch. I've hung around billionaire media proprietors for a long time—I've hung around them; I mean I've known them. I have never seen a politician as deferential to a media proprietor as Trump was to Murdoch—never, in any country. Murdoch's media in the US had a sort of symbiotic relationship with Trump. Was Fox News like state owned media in an authoritarian country, always apologising for, not holding to account its favoured government—in this case, Trump's—or was the media in control of Trump? I know they fell out at the very end, but it's a very, very peculiar relationship.

In Australia, again, it's somewhat different. But look at the way the Murdoch press do not hold the Morrison government to account in the way they've held previous governments to account. That's self-evident. The government therefore feels that it is less accountable. The good question Leigh Sales asked Josh [Frydenberg] the other day was: 'What do you have to do to get sacked as a minister in this government?' Josh struggled to find an answer. I can understand why.

If I could just make one other point though. I've talked before about an ecosystem. The Liberals and Nationals on this committee would understand very keenly what I'm talking about. Because of the way in which we've got into these information silos or news/opinion silos, you get a situation where many of the branch members in the LNP and rusted on supporters rely heavily on Sky News, 2GB if they're in New South Wales and the Murdoch tabloids for their news, so it becomes like an echo chamber and one is feeding and driving the other.

There was a very good revelation from Ted O'Brien, a guy who's actually quite progressive. He's a republican. He was the chairman of the Republican Movement at one point. He explained to me why as a Queensland member he had to support Dutton's coup attempt. He said, 'It's as though my branch members are having a meeting with Alan Jones and Peta Credlin every night.' The influence of this very political media organisation is vastly greater on the coalition than it is on the community at large.

Again you see the same pattern in the United States. It's where right-wing media, particularly Murdoch's, has pulled the Republican Party to the right. John Boehner, the former Speaker, has just written a book that deals with this. Again, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. It has a very big impact on our democracy. The challenge is: what do you do about it?

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