Think global, act global: Corporate content streaming and Australian media policy

Australia ’s media policy agenda has recently been dominated by debate over two key issues: media ownership reform, and the local content provisions of the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement. Challenging the tendency to analyse these issues separately, the article considers them as interlinked indicators of fundamental shifts occurring in the digital media environment. Converged media corporations increasingly seek to achieve economies of scale through ‘content streaming’: multi-purposing proprietary content across numerous digitally enabled platforms. This has resulted in rivalries for control of delivery technologies (as witnessed in media ownership debates) as well as over market access for corporate content (in the case of local content debates). The article contextualises Australia’s contemporary media policy flashpoints within international developments and longer-term industry strategising. It further questions the power of media policy as it is currently conceived to deal adequately with the challenges raised by a converging digital media marketplace.

Access to parental leave in Australia: evidence from Negotiating the Life Course

Although unpaid parental leave has been available to most Australian employees for more than a decade, and public sector legislation and company policies provide at least some employees with an entitlement to paid parental leave, there is as yet little information available on accessibility, take-up rates or the extent to which current leave provisions meet the needs of parents. In this paper, data from the Negotiating the Life Course survey are used to examine the first of these issues: accessibility. Variations in perceptions of access to paid and unpaid parental leave are examined in bivariate and multivariate analyses, which emphasise marked divisions in the Australian labour market between permanent and casual status. The data also suggest that access to unpaid parental leave is more variable than might be expected from a reading of formal legislative provisions, and raise questions over the accessibility of paid parental leave to those who need it most-employees with young children.