Australia’s ‘Convergence Review’

A three-member Convergence Review has recommended fundamental changes to media and communications regulation in Australia. Set up in December 2010 to ‘take a fresh look at Australia’s existing regulatory frameworks with a view to modernising them’ and released in April 2012, the Convergence Review proposes less regulation, differently targeted, and new regulatory institutions to do it. Broadcast licensing would end but some of the obligations currently imposed on licensees would continue for major ‘content service enterprises’. At the time of writing, the Government had not announced a formal response to the Review’s recommendations.