I love The Canberra Times. I read it in Parliament. It punches well above its weight.
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And like most regional newspapers, it delivers a mix of local stories with the stories you need to know about Australia and the world. Much of that non-local content comes via a little-known service called AAP.
AAP - which stands for Australian Associated Press - is the secret sauce of regional media. It's rigorous, independent, fast and accurate. It covers national politics, world events, sports, crime and court reporting. It does it quietly, reliably, and it's done it for over 85 years.
AAP employs many dozens of journalists around the country, generating hundreds of news stories a day, filling thousands of pages of local newspapers, and forming the backbone of radio and TV news bulletins listened to by over 5 million people.
You can flip through The Canberra Times' pages or click through its website and see its fingerprints. You may have never noticed it doing its magic. But I'll tell you what - you'll notice it when it's gone. And that day might not be far from now.
AAP is the only Australian news wire service currently operating. Media companies pay a subscription and they get access to breaking news, written up for them, that they can republish without any further charge.
Because it's the only wire service in town, it has a monopoly. Normally, monopolies can charge whatever they want, and when it's a natural monopoly - when it would cost you too much to start up a competitor - consumers can choose to pay the price or not have the service. There is no "shopping around".
Thankfully, AAP is now a non-profit. And because it doesn't have to return any profits to shareholders, it can keep subscription costs down. That's good because it means publishers like that of The Canberra Times pay less to get access to independent, world-class news. And if The Canberra Times pays less to make the paper, you, the reader, can pay less to read it.
But like every media organisation, AAP is struggling right now. It's resorted to passing around the collection plate in the form of a GoFundMe.
You go to the GoFundMe website, and most of the fundraising projects are things like someone making a movie, or someone paying for surgery - I've never heard of a media organisation that's been around for 85 years needing to rely on crowdfunding to avoid bankruptcy.
There's only really space for one of these monopolies in the market. If AAP falls, the likely alternative is already waiting in the wings.
AAP's status as a non-profit means it doesn't use its market power to gouge smaller players for access to its service. If it's gone, its replacement will have shareholders to return a profit to. It means charging more, which means charging you more.
The price of access to news will go up, and regional players like The Canberra Times will have to choose either to cut back on costs like jobs or circulation, charge more to businesses for advertising space, or just cut down their offerings on news they can't cover in-house.
None of those options benefit Canberra readers.
AAP has applied for money from a federal government fund that is there to support regional journalism. Problem is, they applied months ago, and they have heard nothing.
For the life of me, I can't understand it. The money, in the Public Interest News Gathering fund, exists exactly to support players like AAP. How hard is it to tick the box?
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If the federal government keeps dragging out making a decision, that's a decision too. It's a decision to let time kill AAP.
And if that's allowed to happen, it'll be more than AAP that suffers.
It's not just journalists who'll lose their jobs if their employer goes under.
It's not just publishers, who face even slimmer margins than before, or just going under altogether themselves.
It's not just businesses, who are having to pay more to get their products in front of consumers.
It's not just readers, who will go without the latest national and international news just because they don't happen to live in Sydney or Melbourne.
If AAP doesn't survive, we all lose. I want to be able to keep reading The Canberra Times. I want it to be affordable to readers, to advertisers and to publishers. I want news companies to be able to survive without GoFundMe.
Most of all, Minister for Communications Paul Fletcher, I want you to pick up the bloody pen and tick that box.
- Jacqui Lambie is a senator from Tasmania and leader of the Jacqui Lambie Network.
