The new Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, was discussing an important issue this morning in an exclusive interview with The Age about the difficulties infertile couples face in attaining the legal status of parents due to contradictory laws across the country.

Of course, this is an important issue and Conroy should probably be applauded for the courage to take it on as an issue.

But it is disappointing that this is the battle that appears to be consuming the Minister on his first official day on the job and not the one that should be an important part of his portfolio responsibility.

After missing almost the entire election campaign because I was overseas, I logged onto the ALP’s website today to check out the ALP’s new communications policy. To my horror I discovered it doesn’t have one. Somehow it managed to skate through an entire election campaign without announcing one.

I’m told it had a draft policy. Parts of it were meant to be pretty good too. But it never saw the light of day for reasons that are not clear.

The Rudd Government does have a policy on broadband and a tiny commitment to reform the selection of board members for the ABC. But on the most disturbing changes to cross media rules Australia has ever seen, the new Government is completely silent.

You may recall the Howard Government finally won its ten-year quest to allow greater concentration of media ownership when it used its majority in the Senate during its last term to force through cross media changes. It is arguably one of the most damaging initiatives of the Howard era and one that the ALP bitterly opposed.

So it’s fair enough to ask whether the new Government has considered a roll back of the Howard reforms or not? Will the Rudd Cabinet seek to repeal the laws that allow TV owners to swallow up newspapers in the same market? Will it deal with greedy companies that accumulate regional radio stations and TV networks and centralise their newsrooms at the cost of local content? Will it prevent mergers that allow moguls to further monopolise the media in cities with only one local daily newspaper?

If it did act now, the new Government could limit the damage to a few isolated cases. The Seven Network’s co-owner, Kerry Stokes, has already increased his stake in The West Australian and Fairfax has grabbed Southern Cross Broadcasting, meaning that The Age and 3AW are now owned by the same company, as are The Sydney Morning Herald and 2UE. Macquarie Media has also taken advantage of the new rules to snaffle up several regional television stations as well as its swelling collection of radio stations.

The diminution in media diversity could be contained to this, but only if the Government acts decisively now.

Perhaps it is understandable that an Opposition would hold back a policy that curtailed the power of media proprietors during an election campaign, but now is the time to speak out, if it has any intention to act.

Senator Conroy was being sworn in this morning and his advisors were unavailable for comment.