With Sarah Hanson-Young about to call on fellow senators to back a bill calling for a Royal Commission into the Murdoch family’s Australian media business, views flew at a Crikey panel discussion last week.

Contributors were the news site’s political editor Bernard Keane – who wrote the piece that drew a now-withdrawn writ from Lachlan Murdoch – editor-in-chief Sophie Black, Hanson-Young and Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom chief executive Lesley Power.

And former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has taken over from Kevin Rudd, the chair of the “Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission” pressure group.

By all accounts, he didn’t hold back, accusing News Corp of putting its media power behind a political agenda, and criticising Lachlan Murdoch’s wisdom in suing Crikey.

He said others would be encouraged by “Crikey’s success in standing up so successfully to Lachlan Murdoch, and some other events – Kevin Rudd calling for a Royal Commission, which of course I support, and the Dominion case”.

The Murdoch-owned media was “the political player whose name we dare not speak” and “the single most potent player in Australia’s political mix”, Turnbull (pictured)  said… while however suggesting that may have changed.