Importance of Media Freedom

Today Abigail called for Parliament to acknowledge the vital role a free media play in a healthy democracy and the need for urgent reforms to NSW's broken defamation system.

Ms Boyd says—

Mr PRESIDENT:

I give notice that on the next sitting day I will move:

(1) That this House acknowledges the importance of independent investigative journalism to the integrity of our democratic system.

(2) That this House notes with concern the threat to press freedom and danger to journalism that was posed by the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case.

(3) That this House further notes that although Roberts-Smith was unsuccessful in his case against Nine Entertainment, the silencing of journalism and public criticism of a man charged with war crimes has widespread implications for democracy.

(4) This House notes that NSW has one of the highest instances of defamation claims in the world which:

enables powerful people to suppress accountability and investigations of wrongful conduct,
only serves to protect the secrets, crimes and corruption of wealthy and powerful figures,
poses a threat to our democracy by smothering investigative journalism and public condemnation of actions as severe as war crimes
permitted Ben Roberts Smith to, ‘lie to the court,’ hide key evidence and provide ‘key witnesses who were not honest or reliable’ in order to silence truth telling of the killing of Ali Jan.

(5) That this House calls on the Attorney-General to work with his Federal and State and Territory counterparts to urgently reform our defamation laws to ensure that they are not used as a weapon to silence truth-telling and independent investigative journalism.

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

NSW is missing out on tens of billions of dollars. By introducing a progressive coal royalty structure similar to the one in Queensland, we would have raised an extra $20 billion last year.

The NSW Government owns and controls, on behalf of the people of this state, the rights to the minerals and materials that naturally occur in NSW land.

Huge fossil fuel companies are only able to extract and sell these commodities with the consent of the State. It’s time they paid a fair price for that privilege.

The fossil fuel industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars out of their cosy relationship with governments. Granted permission to extract and sell coal, these large multinational fossil fuel corporations pay just over 7% in royalties back to the people of NSW – keeping the rest as mega-profits for themselves. These companies have a track record of taking more than their fair share and leaving communities suffering and stranded with poisoned groundwater, devastated landscapes and a stranded workforce when it suits their business models.

Globally, the hyper-inflation of fossil fuel prices driven by price-gouging opportunism and war profiteering from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has delivered record windfall profits to these already obscenely wealthy corporations. In the last year, NSW coal exports totaled over $70 billion dollars, but the people of NSW will only see about 7 cents in every dollar, or about $6 billion dollars of that amount.

Rather than going toward schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, billions of dollars went into the pockets of multinational mining corporations. The Greens believe there should be more money for schools and hospitals and less for mining billionaires.

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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Importance of Media Freedom

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

Sign our petition calling on the NSW Labor Government to increase coal royalties to invest in communities.

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