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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-06-05 Daily Xml
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NEWS LIMITED FREIGHT SURCHARGE

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (15:15): In the last sitting week, the member for Flinders raised in this place the issue of the cost of News Limited papers that are distributed across the state. At that time, he talked about the distribution of papers principally to his electorate of Flinders, and he mentioned the island. Let me just say that I am appalled at the action being undertaken by News Limited.

For the benefit of the house, News Limited intends to up the price of The Advertiser and the daily Australian by 80¢ each from 17 June for residents on the West Coast and Kangaroo Island. On weekends, they intend to up the cost of the Weekend Australian, the Saturday Advertiser and the Sunday Mail by another $1 to $3, in the case of the Sunday Mail and The Advertiser,and even more in the case of the Weekend Australian.

I am disgusted by this action; it is blatantly discriminating against country people—it is blatant discrimination. I am all in favour of News Limited making a good profit—I have no problem with that whatsoever; I am a Liberal after all, and that is to be expected. However, in this case, they are putting a surcharge on the cost of papers to cover the cost of bringing them in by air freight to the West Coast and Kangaroo Island. These two areas are remote, and it is not easy to get them there quickly by truck or, more particularly, by truck at all overnight to Kangaroo Island.

I was lobbied heavily on Saturday, I have been lobbied heavily on the phone, and I have received various emails regarding this matter. I cannot for the life of me see why News Limited need to go about this process in the way they are, and why they do not seek a more equitable manner of putting the cost of the papers across a broad distribution.

I see no reason why anybody on Kangaroo Island or the West Coast should pay any more for the paper than they do in Adelaide. I think it is disgusting and an absolute sign of incompetence of the management of News Limited over the distribution of the papers I mentioned. I have absolutely no problem with the content of the papers most of the time; however, put simply, both those areas—and mine in particular—are low socioeconomic areas, and the paper is one of the few pleasures people get for a reasonable price.

It costs $1.20 for The Advertiser, and a lot of people take all day to read it from cover to cover, whether it be the deaths, births and marriages section; the sport; the letters to the editor; or the journalistic articles, it does not matter. They read it from cover to cover, and it is their day's entertainment. Many people in my electorate, particularly older people, do not have computers, they are not online, and it is simply not accessible to them online. Even then, in the case of The Advertiser they are also going to have to pay for that in the future as well, andI have no argument with that.

I simply say to the house, and put it on the record in Hansard forever and a day, that this is a low point for News Limited in what they are doing. It is a very low point, and it should be condemned by all in this place. I have done some media on it and will be doing a bit more. I call on News Limited, and I call on the circulation people, to reconsider this foolish decision.

What really infuriated me even more was when I had one of my staff members to ring The Advertiser last week to confirm the issues. The person in Distribution said to my staff member, 'Oh, well, it is only the cost of a latte, or Diet Coke, or a couple of other things.' I have heard some arrogant nonsense in my time, but I find it disgraceful for people to even suggest that that is the case. They should be made to apologise to those people. For heaven's sake, you can hardly get a latte outside of Kingscote and a number of other places. It is blatantly ridiculous.

In putting this onerous cost I can only see the distribution decreasing, as I am sure will happen on the West Coast as well in the electorate of the member for Flinders. It is already happening. People will simply not buy the paper and there will be an even lower distribution rate.

An honourable member: Newsagents will suffer.

Mr PENGILLY: Newsagents will suffer grievously because they will not have the paper to sell. If this is the way they want to go about it all I can say is that they will not be selling any papers at all in the long term. People value their papers in the country. Not everything that happens technologically in the metropolitan area happens in the bush. People like to devour the paper page by page. This is a disgrace.

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