Australian government consults on bid to make tech giants pay for news

The Australian government is applying pressure on global technology giants with the release of a long-awaited consultation paper on its proposed News Bargaining Incentive.

Bridget Fair

The consultation comes after Facebook owner Meta stopped paying for the Australian news content it carried on its service in March 2024.

Since then commercial broadcasters and news publishers have been lobbying the government to force tech companies to pay for Australian news as their revenues have been eroded.

The incentive is designed to ensure that dominant digital platforms, including Meta, Google and ByteDance, pay Australian publishers for using news content.

Commercial broadcaster lobby group Free TV said the News Bargaining Incentive would establish a levy on digital platforms that could be offset by making fair commercial deals with news publishers. The mechanism builds on principles established by the News Media Bargaining Code.

Free TV estimates that Australian commercial broadcasters invested A$408m (US$266m) in news during the 2024 financial year, including A$35.2m in the country’s regions.

“Global tech platforms enjoy enormous market power and reap massive benefits from Australian news content – it’s time they paid their fair share,” said Free TV CEO Bridget Fair.

Retiring Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes has championed the cause and criticised the government’s inaction over regulatory and policy overhaul.

“We live in an environment which has changed dramatically, and it has changed because of streamers like Amazon, Google and Facebook, who are eating our lunch. And we’ve got a government and policy settings which make it impossible to contain them. They take our product, redistribute it in various fashions, they clip it, they put it on YouTube, they do all sorts of things with it for which we get no reward,” he told shareholders at last year’s AGM.

Under the proposed incentive model any digital platform with revenues exceeding A$250m earned in Australia from search or social media services would face a charge equivalent to 2.25% of this revenue.

Platforms would have the option to negotiate or renew commercial deals with Australian news outlets directly. In that scenario, each dollar paid to publishers or networks would reduce the amount payable by A$1.50.

“Treasury is mindful that digital markets are fast-moving and the interaction of news media with platforms will change over time as markets change. The incentive will seek to balance flexibility in its scope and operation while providing a level of certainty to platforms and news businesses,” the paper states.

The industry consultation on the proposals closes on December 19.