(Image: Mitchell Squire/Private Media)

Media policy in Australia, no matter who is in government, is usually about one thing: politics. The government’s latest iteration is no exception.

The primary political goal is to look after the interests of the commercial free-to-air television broadcasters who play such an important role in election campaigns. They’ve been protected from competition for generations — competition from a fourth television licence, from subscription television, from digital broadcasting and, now, from streaming services that offer viewers the kind of choice and control that the antiquated free-to-air broadcasting model can never match.

That tradition continues, albeit dressed up in protectionist garb, with streaming services to be subjected to a scheme to “incentivise and, as needed, require” streaming services to spend more on Australian content — although how foreign-owner and -operated streaming services will be “required” to do anything isn’t clear.

For decades, the local content industry has insisted that Australians want to watch “our stories, told well”, but have always claimed the stick of regulation is needed to force media to pay for it.

The argument might have stacked up when it paid for hundreds of hours of Australian drama but the result these days is an incessant torrent of reality TV sludge like Married at First Sight, Big Brother or Australian Survivor.

With mostly foreign-owned streaming services burdened with extra costs for outcompeting local media (similar to Google and Facebook being punished for being better at advertising than News Corp and Nine), the government’s attention turned to the ABC and SBS.

There, things are trickier, because the Coalition’s long-term goal, encouraged by News Corp, is the destruction of a competitive public broadcasting system. But its incessant attacks on the ABC are deeply unpopular in once-safe, now threatened urban Liberal seats where Voices Of and independent candidates are threatening self-described “Liberal moderates”.

So the agenda to destroy the ABC has been placed on hold. The ABC’s budget won’t be further cut for the moment. Instead it will be given a small funding increase, below inflation — just an extra $87 million on a triennial basis, or about 2.8%. SBS, which poses little political threat to the government, gets 6%.

The ABC will be compelled to report how much it spends on local content, despite the very document the government published to justify it showing the ABC spent about as much on local content as the three commercial broadcasters combined.

In any event, those “moderate Liberals” can now tell their constituents about a funding increase for the ABC, even if it doesn’t make up for past cuts and is a cut in real terms.

The next problem is regional media, with regional TV broadcasters remaining on death row as advertising revenue declines and regional publishers continuing to struggle. Direct funding support for regional TV will continue until 2024, as will support for regional and public interest journalism. In addition, the government will provide $50 million for training and cadetships for regional journalism. The ABC has also been given additional funding to support regional journalism.

In this case, good politics happens to be good policy — regional and public interest journalism are both under threat and there’s no magic commercial solution to ensuring the continuing provision of them as the legacy media slowly dies.

The government deserves credit for continuing the support for public interest journalism initiated by Nick Xenophon in exchange for supporting Malcolm Turnbull’s media reforms in 2017 (Crikey’s owner Private Media has been a beneficiary of it). The economics of regional journalism aren’t going to improve any time soon, so continued government support is crucial in smaller communities.

Finally, as always, the subscription television sector has been thrown a bone: local content requirements for pay TV will be overhauled to make them easier.

We’re now into a second decade of handouts for the television networks. It started in 2010 when Labor cut the television licence fee from 9% of revenue and more than $250 million a year to 4.5%. The Coalition in 2017 got rid of it altogether and substituted the $40 million a year spectrum fee. And there has been other ad hoc assistance, like the more than $40 million given to Foxtel.

As always, the free-to-air sector has immediately complained that it hadn’t been given enough handouts — despite advertising revenue bouncing back strongly from the recession. In fact The Australian’s media section on Monday carried a headline “Huge rebound in TV advertising”, referring to 2021. But the commercial networks still want the spectrum fee abolished as well.

Nothing is ever enough for some of the greediest rent-seekers in the Australian economy.

That, too, is another media policy tradition.

Does restoring 2018 levels of funding for the ABC make up for the previous cuts? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.