Peter Beattie is barking up the wrong proprietor in his wish for Fairfax to give The Courier-Mail some competition. Instead he should ask Peter Costello to stop working for Rupert Murdoch and allow in the foreign publisher who already wants to start a daily in Brisbane.

The Queensland Premier may as well hope to win Lotto as bet on Fairfax taking on Brisbane – Fairfax is having enough trouble just surviving in the larger two-paper towns of Sydney and Melbourne. Its ambitions go no further than dreaming of acquiring the West Australian monopoly. (And if you really want to be depressed about the outlook for newspapers, there’s a not-irrational school of thought that Sydney and Melbourne will eventually become single paper cities too.)

There is just a glimmer of hope though for newspaper diversity that is stymied by Peter Costello looking after the News Corp mates. As we’ve reported previously (here for example), Spanish media mogul Javier Moll wants to open daily papers in Adelaide and Brisbane but is prevented by the whims and favouritism of the Federal Treasurer.

Costello seems to have sub-let administration of the Foreign Investment Review Board to News Ltd’s lawyers. The FIRB newspaper guidelines (and they are only guidelines for the Treasurer, not laws) have been twisted to allow an American company, News Corporation, start new newspapers here, but prevent Moll having a go.

It reeks, but it’s only part of the greater corruption of Australian media policy exemplified by the Federal Government waiting for the existing proprietors to agree on how they want to control their own game before attempting policy changes.

A government that was not in a corrupt relationship with proprietors would seek policy that benefited the public and never mind the self interest of Rupert, the Kerrys, Macquarie Bank et al.