Investigations on the phone hacking scandal involving his son's now defunct UK paper have not been closed, but Rupert Murdoch is involved in another controversy, this time in his native Australia.

Murdoch's newspaper empire in Australia has been perceived to have the strongest efforts in trying to undermine Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told Bloomberd that Murdoch's Daily Telegraph is "running a campaign on regime change."

Daily Telegraph is the best-selling daily newspaper in Sydney.

Gillard herself demanded and got a retraction and apology from the Australian, another daily owned by Murdoch's News Corp (NWSA), after it ran an inaccurate news item. Gillard said the Daily Telegraph should enter another report "for one of our fiction prizes."

Australian lawmaker John Murphy has said Murdoch's dailies' reports have created a "climate of fear" in the country.

"It's not surprising at all that Murdoch is at it again in Australia while the U.K. phone-hacking scandal is still fresh," Bloomberg quotes Tim Bale, a professor of politics at the University of Sussex and the author of "The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron."

"He tries to use his economic power to get political influence. It's part of his business model," added Bale.

Meanwhile, Mudoch's spokesman Greg Baxter said there is no campaign against the government by News Ltd., News Corp's Australian unit.

"We have made it clear that the company and its mastheads do not have and are not engaged in any kind of campaign for regime change as has been alleged by members of the government," Baxter wrote in an e-mail to Bloomberg after it sought comments from News Corp.

Bloomberg recalls that less than two months ago, Murdoch told the U.K. Parliament that the theft of voicemails by his News of the World made his appearance "the most humble day of my life."

Murdoch, 80, controls about 70 per cent of the newspapers. His papers helped elect every British government over three decades, and no New York mayor has been re-elected without his support since he first bought the New York Post in 1976.