501,876 signatures and nothing happened

501,876. That is the number of Australians who signed Kevin Rudd’s parliamentary petition calling for a royal commission into Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia. It is the largest electronic petition ever presented to the Australian Parliament. The parliamentary website crashed under the volume of signatures. For comparison: the previous record was 404,538 signatures on a 2019 petition calling on the government to declare a climate emergency. Rudd’s petition beat that by nearly 100,000 people. Half a million Australians. One petition. One clear demand. That was October 2020. It is now March 2026. No royal commission has been held. No judicial inquiry has been conducted. No meaningful reform of media ownership laws has occurred.

01The petition: what it called for and why

Kevin Rudd launched the petition on 12 October 2020. It called on the Australian Parliament to establish a royal commission into ‘the abuse of media monopoly in Australia in particular by the Murdoch media’.

Rudd described News Corp as ‘a cancer, an arrogant cancer on our democracy’. His petition was supported by former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a bipartisan endorsement that reflected how deep the frustration with News Corp’s conduct had run across political lines.

The petition did not call for the closure of News Corp, the regulation of its content, or any restriction on its right to hold political opinions. It called for a transparent, independent examination of whether the company’s concentration of market power was compatible with a functioning democracy.

501,876 Australians agreed it should be examined.

02The Senate inquiry: what it found

The petition’s success triggered a Senate inquiry. In November 2020, the Senate referred an inquiry into media diversity, independence, and reliability to the Environment and Communications References Committee. The inquiry ran throughout 2021.

The committee’s report, tabled on 9 December 2021, was unequivocal. The regulatory environment was ‘weak, fragmented, and inconsistent’ and ‘not fit-for-purpose’. Evidence was ‘overwhelmingly critical of News Corp’s influence’. News Corp was described as ‘Australia’s clearest example of a troubling media monopoly’.

News Corp was described as ‘Australia’s clearest example of a troubling media monopoly.’

The committee’s primary recommendation was the establishment of a judicial inquiry, with the powers of a royal commission, into media diversity, ownership, and regulation. This was exactly what Rudd’s petition had called for.

Two Coalition senators issued dissenting views. Senator Andrew Bragg called the recommendations ‘reckless’. Rudd’s response: ‘A profound disappointment that Liberal and National senators decided again to jump into bed with Murdoch against the Australian people and against our democracy.’

03What happened next: a timeline of inaction

December 9, 2021. Senate inquiry report tabled. Recommends judicial inquiry with royal commission powers.

May 21, 2022. Federal election. Labor wins under Anthony Albanese. Before the election, Albanese had explicitly committed that Labor would not hold a royal commission into News Corp.

June 2022. A formal letter on media diversity was sent to Communications Minister Michelle Rowland. After over a year and repeated reminders, no response was received.

August 25, 2022. Albanese, Deputy PM Richard Marles, and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are reported to have met with Lachlan Murdoch at News Corp’s Sydney offices, three months after winning. All three refuse to confirm or say what was discussed.

August 2024. The Australian Government finally publishes its formal response to the Senate inquiry. Every recommendation (the judicial inquiry, the royal commission powers, the ABC funding protections, the media regulation reform, the independent trust for journalism, every single one) receives the identical response: ‘The Government notes this recommendation. However, given the passage of time since this report was tabled, a substantive Government response is no longer appropriate.’ Two and a half years of silence, followed by a six-page document saying it was too late to respond. ¹⁴

May 3, 2025. Federal election. Labor wins a landslide second term.

March 2026. No judicial inquiry has been held. The Senate committee’s recommendations have not been implemented. The situation remains unchanged.

Correction, 7 October 2026. This timeline listed the August 2024 government response before the August and June 2022 entries. The entries are now in date order; their wording is unchanged.

04This is not the first time: a pattern forty years old

1981. The Norris Report (Victoria) recommended an independent statutory authority to scrutinise newspaper acquisitions. Met ‘indignant opposition from newspaper companies’. Went nowhere.

1992. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Print Media examined concentration issues. No meaningful reform.

2011. The Finkelstein Review recommended a statutory News Media Council with powers across all news outlets. News Corp attacked it vigorously. Reform abandoned after the government could not secure Senate support.

2013. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy introduced six media reform bills. Only two of the least controversial passed.

2020–2021. Kevin Rudd’s petition and the resulting Senate inquiry. Report tabled December 2021. Judicial inquiry recommended. Not implemented.

Five inquiries. Forty years. Each one finding the same thing. Each one recommending some version of the same remedies. Each one going nowhere.

05Why nothing ever happens: the fear factor

The question is not why News Corp opposes accountability; that is self-evident. The question is why successive governments, of both parties, have consistently failed to act when handed clear evidence and clear public support for reform.

Professor Sally Young of the University of Melbourne: ‘It’s a sad thing that many Australian politicians fear the wrath of that media organization. And it’s a realistic fear to have.’

A realistic fear. Not irrational. Not paranoid. A realistic assessment that News Corp has the power, and the demonstrated willingness, to damage politicians who challenge it.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull documented this: News Corp worked to destroy his government when he refused to partner with the Murdochs. His government was indeed destroyed, via a leadership coup that Turnbull said had ‘strong support within News Corp’, a fact Rupert Murdoch later admitted to him directly.

Kim Williams, former CEO of News Limited, put it plainly: ‘News Corp has no influence with the public but an acute influence with politicians.’ The influence works not by persuading voters, but by making politicians fear the organisation.

06The Murdoch meeting

In August 2022, three months after winning office, Albanese, Marles, and Wong are reported to have met with Lachlan Murdoch at News Corp’s Sydney headquarters. The Communications Minister was not there. No disclosure was made. When asked to confirm or describe what was discussed, all three refused.

A government that had won an election partly on promises of transparency declined to tell Australians what was discussed when its three most senior ministers met with the owner of the country’s most powerful media company.

In May 2023, Albanese met again with News Corp executives to try to persuade them to support the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. The meeting was, in effect, a prime minister seeking the permission of a media company to proceed with a constitutional referendum.

News Corp campaigned against the Voice. The referendum failed. The pattern of accommodation did not prevent News Corp from campaigning against the government’s major policy initiatives. It only ensured the government could not say it had not tried.

07What would actually change things

1. Media ownership law reform: restoring meaningful cross-media ownership restrictions, reducing concentration. This requires legislation that the major parties have consistently refused to pass.

2. An independent judicial inquiry: with the power to compel witnesses, examine financial relationships, review editorial practices, and make enforceable recommendations.

3. A single platform-neutral media regulator: with oversight over News Corp, Nine, Sky News, and digital platforms under the same standards.

4. Real-time political transparency: disclosure of meetings between senior ministers and major media proprietors.

5. Extended post-employment restrictions: five-year cooling-off periods for former ministers, as recommended by the Centre for Public Integrity.

None of these are radical proposals. Most have been recommended by parliamentary inquiries. Most exist in comparable democracies. None has been implemented in Australia.

08The end of the series. The beginning of the watchdog.

This series, six articles covering media ownership, mining interests, property conflicts, Sky News, the revolving door, and the failure of accountability, has told one story. A story about a democracy in which the institutions that should hold power accountable are substantially owned, influenced, and in some cases staffed by the very power they are supposed to scrutinise.

501,876 Australians signed a petition. A Senate committee agreed with them. A report was written. Recommendations were made. And nothing happened.

Five inquiries. Forty years. Each one finding the same thing. Each one going nowhere.

The inaction is not a mystery. It is a consequence of the system this series has described. Politicians fear News Corp. Labor governments accommodate Murdoch. The revolving door ensures that the people who make media policy and the people who profit from media policy share networks, relationships, and ambitions.

But 501,876 is also the beginning of something. It is evidence that the appetite for accountability exists. It is evidence that when Australians are given a direct mechanism to say ‘this is wrong, investigate it’, they will use it in numbers that crash parliamentary servers.

The problem is not public will. The problem is that the people who would need to act on that will are the same people who sit across the table from Murdoch without disclosing what is said.

The Rort is not a parliamentary petition. It cannot compel royal commissions. What it can do is document, consistently, accurately, and with sources, the structural arrangements this series has described. And it can make sure that when the next inquiry fails to produce action, there is at least a record of why, and who benefited from the inaction.

If it’s a rort, we cover it.