The Alliance has lodged an unfair dismissal claim with the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in relation to the sacking of Wes Young - a cadet journalist employed at The Examiner. Management has claimed that the termination was a result of Wes tendering his resignation. However, Mr Young denies that it was ever his intention to tender his resignation from The Examiner and maintains that he had simply been trying to negotiate a transfer of his employment from The Examiner to The Advocate (both controlled by Rural Press).

The Federal Government’s plans for the future of media ownership, unveiled yesterday at the National Press Club, would result in the contraction of media corporations by half. The Federal Minister for Communications, Senator Helen Coonan, announced that the government was considering radical changes to media ownership laws, allowing corporations to own a television station, two radio stations and a daily newspaper in the same area.

Herald-Sun journalists Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus face jail for refusing to reveal the key source of an article that caused Government embarrassment. The Canberra-based journalists remained tight-lipped as the prosecution of senior public servant Desmond Patrick Kelly, charged with leaking the information, continued in the Melbourne County Court on Tuesday. Attacks on press freedom are becoming all too familiar as was highlighted in the Alliance’s Press Freedom Report, launched earlier this year. This is yet another example of an increasingly concerning trend where journalists and their sources are being intimidated from speaking out.

Old Parliament House is developing a new interpretive exhibition and for the first time the House of Representatives Press Gallery will be open to the public. While researchers have gathered material such as personal correspondence, newspaper clippings and oral histories, they need your help to collect more objects associated with working in the Parliamentary Press Gallery.