Brown reveals $1m media law bribe offer

Greens Senator Bob Brown says he was offered a $1 million bribe by a media company to support the loosening of the nation's media laws.

Senator Brown says he received a phone call from someone in 2000 offering a package of media coverage and publicity for the Greens worth $1m over the course of a year.

The offer came at a time when Senator Brown and a number of independents held the balance of power in the Senate.

Senator Brown says he rejected the offer.

"I said no," he told ABC Radio National's Background Briefing.

"I just told the person putting the offer that I don't sleep too well - fortunately I sleep a lot better these days but I wasn't at the time - and if were to take up that offer I wouldn't sleep at all. I left it at that."

However Senator Brown has defended his decision not to make the offer public at the time.

"I didn't because it went nowhere and because in publishing an approach like that the advice I got was that I would [be] open to defamation ... because I was defaming a character who would very clearly deny that a conversation had ever taken place," he said.