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News Corp facing hacking inquiry in Australia.

The Australian government has called for an investigation into allegations that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation engaged in hacking and piracy against its pay-TV rivals.

Earlier in the week, the BBC's Panorama programme aired evidence suggesting that the part News Corp-owned NDS smartcard maker hacked into the technology used by ITV Digital - a key rival to News Corp's Sky - and then made the data available to pirates.

This was followed yesterday by a report in the Australian Financial Review, claiming that News Corp also engaged in high-tech piracy to sabotage its rivals in Australia, including Optus and Austar.

The Australian Financial Review, owned by Fairfax, a rival media group to News Corp, said that during a four-year investigation it had received 14,400 emails from a hard drive in a laptop used by Ray Adams, who acted as NDS's European security chief until May 2002.

Panorama also referred to Adams as the key contact for alleged piracy activity against ITV Digital, operated through a hacker website called the 'House of Ill Compute'.