Australia’s effort to make large technology platforms contribute to news publishing is back in a new form — and the country’s biggest media companies are not happy with the latest version.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese held talks Monday with opposition leader Angus Taylor as the government sought support for a revised News Bargaining Incentive, according to news.com.au and The Australian.
The revised proposal would apply a 2.5% levy to Australian digital advertising revenue above A$250 million rather than calculating the obligation against a platform’s broader gross revenue. Publishers including Nine and News Corp have argued that the change reduces the amount likely to flow to journalism and weakens the bargaining power of news organizations.
The policy follows years of conflict over the value platforms receive from professional news and the traffic, advertising and audience data that move through digital ecosystems. Australia’s earlier News Media Bargaining Code became an international test case for forcing platforms and publishers into commercial agreements.
The current fight is also arriving as AI systems create a second distribution problem: publishers are increasingly asking not only whether search and social platforms should pay for news, but how generative systems should compensate the reporting they summarize or use to answer questions.
Why it matters
The economics of journalism are becoming inseparable from platform policy. Australia is again testing whether governments can shift some of the value captured by digital distribution back toward the organizations that pay to produce original reporting.