Yes, the media in Australia is too concentrated (though this was more of a problem in the pre internet era).
Yes News Corp has a conservative bias and always has (it was actually a lot more pronounced in the olden days).
But no, News Corp is not the enemy. Really. Its just providing a market for what the readers want. I remember being told in 1991 by a (left wing) journalist that the Herald Sun didn’t really filter its letters- that what you saw is what you got. And what you got were a lot of conservatives writing in to the newspaper.
Pick up the Australian newspaper now and you’ll see letter after letter from people rubbishing climate change. These people exist- they have to give a name and verifiable address to be published, and they do so. I have met plenty of people like this in my life, and still do.
If you read, closely, the editorials of the Australian, they have, in fact, been reasonably liberal on climate change. Yes, they publish a lot of op-eds from a denial perspective. And I’ll bet you they’ve done that because these columns appeal to the readers. It’s the readers- mostly older, more often male, that are the bedrock of the Australian’s culture. If anything, its more liberal than they are.
Its comforting in a way to think its all Rupert’s fault. If you can blame one person you can divert your eyes from the real deniers of climate change- the vast bulk of people who object to changing anything (and in their partial defence, many of the solutions are not quite there yet). But, the same way his conversion to the green cause in 2007 didn’t change much back then, it wouldn’t change much now. People are the real problem.