RUPERT MURDOCH, a man not given to flights of lyricism, calls them “rivers of gold”. What moved him so deeply was the splendour of the advertising revenues of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Melbourne’s leading newspaper. For the better part of a decade, Mr Murdoch and rival media bosses have been fighting to gain control of the company that owns both newspapers, the Fairfax group. Battle is about to be joined again because the Australian government is preparing new rules on who can own what.

The Fairfax group is no longer owned by the Fairfax family. An attempt by a member of the family to buy it back in 1987 went wrong so badly that the firm was almost destroyed. Warwick Fairfax, then only 26, secured a huge loan to regain control of the empire. Three years later, Fairfax was in receivership, and the audacious Mr Fairfax applied for work as a junior reporter on the Sydney Morning Herald. (He was rejected.) A struggle for control of the company followed, and has never been fully resolved.

By 1993 Conrad Black’s Hollinger Group had become Fairfax’s largest shareholder, with 25% of the firm. As a Canadian newspaper magnate (who also happens to own Britain’s Daily Telegraph), Mr Black is denied a bigger stake by Australia’s rules on foreign ownership. The second-biggest shareholder, with some 15%, was Kerry Packer. Mr Packer has long yearned for control of Fairfax. However, despite being an Australian, he too cannot increase his shareholding. Another set of laws, on cross-media holdings, imposes further restrictions on newspapers and television stations. Mr Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd is Australia’s largest magazine publisher and owner of Nine Network, the leading television channel.

After intense lobbying for the right to increase his stake, Mr Black eventually gave up in December 1996 and agreed to sell his shareholding to Brierley Investments. This is a group based in New Zealand and partly owned by Asian investors; as such, it is subject to the same foreign-ownership limits. Paul Collins, Brierley’s chief executive, says the company is a “supportive long-term shareholder”, but many Australian analysts expect Brierley to sell when a profit comes in sight.

That may happen in the next few weeks, when the government announces the result of its review of the laws on media ownership. The review was set up to consider only the cross-media rules, but some analysts think that it may be impossible to loosen these (as the government seems inclined to do) without also changing the rules on foreign ownership.

Australia’s media rules were intended to avoid a concentration of ownership. They have failed. Mr Murdoch’s News Corp owned about half the circulation of Australia’s major newspapers a decade ago, and now owns about 70%. Fairfax controls another 20%. This week Mr Packer spent an hour urging John Howard, the prime minister, not to let the foreigners have any more. As Mr Murdoch has swapped his Australian passport for an American one (to evade ownership restrictions in the United States), Mr Packer reckons his old rival should now be treated like a foreigner. Mr Murdoch, who has also been talking to Mr Howard, has argued that more foreign investment should be allowed. Most other media proprietors agree.

For now Mr Murdoch seems to have given up on Fairfax. News Corp sold its stake of nearly 5% in the group in November last year. That is probably because Mr Murdoch has his sights elsewhere: on the Seven Network. News Corp owns 15% of it, but cannot buy more because of the same cross-media rules that limit Mr Packer’s interest in Fairfax.

It is unclear whether Mr Howard’s Liberal-National coalition will change the rules much, especially those on foreign ownership. Getting any such proposals past the Australian Senate would be difficult. Nevertheless, foreign and local groups are preparing to bid for any titles that may come on to the market, even if Mr Packer gains control of Fairfax.

Britain’s Pearson group, which owns the Financial Times (and thereby half of The Economist), said on April 22nd that it has been approached about making a bid for the Australian Financial Review, a business daily which is part of the Fairfax stable. Another interested party might be Tony O’Reilly, an Irishman whose day job is running the Heinz food empire but who moonlights as a newspaper tycoon. Mr O’Reilly already owns a string of provincial newspapers in Australia, and was greatly miffed to be beaten by Mr Black for a stake in Fairfax.

Given all this interest, it may seem odd to ask whether the Fairfax rivers are really so golden. But are they? On paper, the company’s recent performance is hardly thrilling. Last year, restrained by higher newsprint costs and a sluggish Australian economy, the firm made a net profit of A$87.5m ($68.5m) on sales of A$1 billion. In the age of the Internet, converging technologies and new advertising media, can it really keep those revenues flowing? Perhaps it can. Fairfax’s new Internet-based classified advertising already claims to offer web-surfers some 60,000 on-line ads.