Media companies on the Australian Stock Exchange immediately
got a share-price boost yesterday when the first draft of the government’s
long-awaited media reforms were unveiled.
Which is hardly surprising, says Michael Sainsbury in The Australian. Foreign companies will now be allowed to invest in what is
already a global business where scale is increasingly important.

Basically, investors are anticipating that the biggest shake-up in
media legislation in Australia
for almost two decades will trigger a spate of takeovers, says Helen Westerman
in The Age – especially considering the proposals set to dismantle restrictions blocking media mergers.

But while there are those who think Coonan’s proposed
changes are “bold, clever and ingenious” (Harold Mitchell in The Age), others say they’re “lame” (Tom Burton, SMH), much ado about nothing, unless your
name’s Packer (Elizabeth Knight, SMH), ok if you like all your news to be the same (Alan Kohler,
SMH), a textbook example of Orwellian Newspeak (Kenneth Davidson,
The Age), and a bit of everything but not much of anything (John Durie in the Fin, not online).

Elsewhere, The
Australian‘s Bryan Frith says an alternative for Alinta may be to simply
counter AGL’s takeover by converting its
proposal to merge with AGL into a genuine
bid, to see which company is the first to get to 50%, and therefore control… Analysts say Toll Holdings will take over Patrick Corp — it is just a question
of paying the right price…
And BHP Billiton’s battle to build an $US800
million liquefied natural gas terminal off the
Californian coast is set to heat up again.

On Wall Street, US
stocks rallied to a sharply higher close Tuesday, after a significant decline
in long-term interest rates pushed the S&P 500 to its highest finish level
in almost five years. The Dow Jones closed up 75.32 points at 11,151.34, its
highest close since June 2001.