Budget front pages. The federal government’s annual gift to cartoonists and artists, the federal budget, featured on all the major daily newspapers today.

Vale Russell McPhedran. Longtime Fairfax photographer Russell McPhedran, who died at 82 on Monday, has been remembered in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald today for his portfolio of some of history’s most important moments, including the Munich Olympics. Fairfax has also published a gallery of some of McPhedran’s images.

Phnom Penh Post exodus continues. The fallout out from the weekend’s sale of Cambodia’s last independent, English-language newspaper has continued, with another seven resignations. Journalist Erin Handley tweeted yesterday that there had been another seven resignations at the Phnom Penh Post, including her own, since the editor-in-chief and other senior staff were either fired or resigned earlier in the week. She said that took the total to 14 people who’d left. The paper was sold to Malaysian businessman Sivakumar S Ganapathy, whose PR firm has done work for the Cambodian government, as pressure on the press in the country have dramatically increased over the past year.

Lonely Planet boss out. Travel publisher Lonely Planet CEO Daniel Houghton is leaving the job, Skift has reported. In a statement to Skift, Lonely Planet confirmed that Houghton was moving to a CEO role with an unnamed digital company, after five years at the travel publisher, which has its headquarters in Melbourne.

Another UK media inquiry. Out of the blue, the UK is on the brink of yet another inquiry into the performance of the country’s media. Prime Minister Theresa May is facing growing pressure from parts of her party for the new investigation — media reports suggest that several Conservative MPs have threatened to defeat the government on key data legislation.

On top of this the UK House of Commons votes tonight, our time, on a Labour proposal that will impose significant costs on media organisations sued on data protection grounds, unless they have accepted state-backed regulation. Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson has put up an amendment which would introduce costs sanctions requiring publishers to pay the claimants’ costs of legal action brought against them in data protection cases, win or lose, unless they are signed up to a state-backed regulator.

The first major probe was by Leveson Inquiry from 2011 through to 2013 and was commissioned after the News of the World hacking scandal. UK Culture Minister, Matt Hancock ruled out a second public inquiry in March. But a cross-party amendment to the data protection bill would establish a sweeping public inquiry “into allegations of data protection breaches committed by, or on behalf of, national news publishers and other media organisations,” including broadcasters.

Facebook and Google would be in the firing line here, but the inquiry would also, as did the Leveson inquiry, look at the relationships between police and the press, as well as the role of politicians and public officials. — Glenn Dyer

Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings. The 7.30pm Treasurer’s Speech broadcast on the ABC’s main channel at this year averaged 772,000 nationally — down more than 17%, with the metro audience dropping to 495,000 from 629,000 and regional audience averaging 277,000, down from 297,000. The talk after the speech on the ABC averaged 630,000 nationally this time round, down 136,000 viewers from 2017’s 766,000. The metro audience tumbled more than 20% to 415,000 (from 525,000) and the regional audience fell from 242,000 last year to 214,000.

The Voice was the most watched non-news program with 1.24 million nationally, over MasterChef on 1.12 million (It was the most watched non-news program in the metros, but has weak regional support). House Rules was weak — 1.03 million last night and just 621,000 in the metros. — Read the rest on the Crikey website