From experience, Australian media policy must be a mogul-free zone

So, journalists beware : your job may disappear in a fog of 'sharing of resources'. Public beware: what you will get if this goes through will be a giant, concentrated news service where tonight's TV news will be tomorrow's leftovers for the press and radio.

It is hard to believe, but the ABA, a government body, will decide if media companies have set up their news and editorial branches in the way the government wants them set up.

What then, has been advanced by the Minister to justify these monumental changes allowing foreign ownership and abolishing the cross-media laws?

Why, convergence, of course , the cliché of the media age that answers all problems. All forms of media are converging together, we are told and will blend into the internet; so let us get onto the international bandwagon.

It is all nonsense, of course ; the collapse of so many internet companies and the $US 58b loss by the AOL-Time Warner marriage alone have shown that big media companies based on convergence spell big trouble and bigger losses.

And is it all so urgent yet? Try this test. Look up 'convergence' and 'internet' on the Department of Communications' own website. The last entry for each of them was four years ago! No doubt about this convergence: it's coming for us at a frightening speed.

But perhaps we ought to slow everything down for a while, before we lose too much of what we value.