TONY JONES: Finally, Stephen Conroy, you made a comment in Senate Estimates yesterday that The Australian newspaper doesn't bother reporting news anymore; they're engaged in regime change. What did you mean by that exactly?
STEPHEN CONROY: Well they've been waging a war since just before the election was finished, creating stories that are completely untrue. Let me give you a very straightforward example. The Australian newspaper have continued to perpetrate one of these - what is reaching urban myth levels, because of their constant repetition of it, that there's a $6,000 cost to rewire your home to get the NBN.
Now Mike Quigley has made it clear last night, but many times in discussions with the newspaper, that is not true. And if you go to Tasmania, where people are already live and connected, there has been no re-wiring. There's been a small number of people who want to do some re-wiring for their own purposes. But this myth that there's a $6,000 cost to get the NBN into your home, all this re-wiring, it's completely false. And The Australian are repeating it over and over again. And apparently there's a massive blowout.
TONY JONES: So are you saying they're on a campaign against you and the NBN? Is that what you're saying?
STEPHEN CONROY: No, I'm saying that they are campaigning strongly against the NBN on a basis of a whole range of myths that they are helping to perpetuate. The wiring is one. Apparently there's gonna be a massive blowout. Normally you wait till after at least a project's commenced before you claim there's a blowout in costs. Because they are just getting together a whole range of disparate facts, not wanting to be interested in the factual circumstances and printing them on the front page day in and day out. So they are not interested ...
TONY JONES: So do you have the feeling that you're at war with News Limited over this at the moment?
STEPHEN CONROY: No, I'm talking about The Australian particularly. The Australian continue to print stories that have no basis in fact. There is no basis in fact that there's a $6,000 cost to wire your house to get the National Broadband Network. But it keeps being repeated. It keeps being repeated on talkback radio, it keeps being repeated in commentary in other newspapers that pick it up.
Other commentators suddenly say, "Well, I've read it in The Australian; it must be true," and therefore they start repeating it and making these same false claims. And Mike Quigley has repeatedly, both before the election, after the election and the consumer experience in Tasmania proves it's false.
TONY JONES: Okay. We're nearly out of time, but what did you therefore mean when you accused them of wanting regime change or campaigning essentially for regime change? Are you saying they're campaigning against your Government, using the NBN to beat you over the head? Is that the argument you're making?
STEPHEN CONROY: I think it's fair to say that the campaigning that they're doing against the NBN doesn't meet any journalistic balance, it doesn't meet any journalistic accountability, if you were to look at the actual factual substance of the story. And it's very disappointing to see a newspaper losing its way in this way. And they have been maintaining this campaign to try and create uncertainty, to create falsehoods about the NBN and they are knowingly doing it.
TONY JONES: Well where does regime change come into it?
STEPHEN CONROY: You can only come to the conclusion that they are determined to destroy the NBN in the eyes of Australians because it was an important factor in us winning government. And you've seen the tantrum they threw after the election, and this just is part of an ongoing tantrum by The Australian newspaper about the outcome of the election.
via www.abc.net.au
It's as blatant as Conroy states but not surprising. Follow the shill, in this case Matthew Franklin. Not a bone of journalistic integrity in his body.
Posted by: Lloyd | 26 October 2010 at 08:19 AM