Two former ACCC bosses have separately raised concerns over the new NBI’s ability to force global giants to pay for the news they use. Photo: David Murtagh.
Two things happened on Monday (3 August) concerning news media in this country, and neither has done it – or Australia’s democracy – any favours.
The first was the release of the Federal Government’s final draft of its News Bargaining Incentive, which includes a number of significant changes to what was first mooted.
The newly tweaked NBI legislation lifts the tax rate it plans to apply to big tech from 2.25 per cent to 2.5 per cent, but the levy will now be limited to tech companies that have raised at least $250 million a year from digital advertising revenue.
They can offset this tax by striking deals with local publishers.
The earlier draft of the legislation, however, would have seen the levy charged against gross annual revenues – not just digital advertising.
The development has found few friends.
The tech giants will always complain about having to pay to use someone else’s work, but they must be quietly pleased that this revamp is quite a government backflip in their favour.
Their biggest gripe (for one of them, at least) is that LinkedIn, which was previously carved out of the plan, will now have to pay its share as well.
But will any of them be paying much at all to Australian media companies to distribute locally made news on their platforms?
Under the incoming rules, the tech companies only have to make deals with six Australian media outlets.
Two former ACCC bosses have separately raised concerns over the new NBI’s ability to force global giants to pay for the news they use.
Rod Sims described the new plan as a “lack of ambition” on the government’s part, adding that many smaller publishers will likely miss out on deals and that not much money will be raised from the big tech companies overall.
“There’s a lack of ambition, and simple arithmetic here,” he said.
“It just means not everybody will get a deal; in fact, most won’t.
“Some outlets in public interest journalism won’t get some. That’s a real concern.”
Fellow former ACCC chair Alan Fels said the scheme didn’t go far enough and that the NBI should be seeking to extract more from the global social media platforms.
The Coalition thinks the legislation is a joke that has “dudded” Australian journalists.
Shadow communications minister Sarah Henderson described it as a free kick to the multinational tech giants.
“Our journalists and news organisations play a vital role in our democracy. They need to be properly compensated when digital platforms such as Meta, Google, TikTok and Microsoft profit from Australian news content,” she said.
“Not only will Labor’s scheme mean less money for Australian journalism, but the government is also now doing even less to encourage commercial deals with big tech, which is extremely disappointing.”
At first take, not even Australia’s media bosses like what they see in the new bargaining incentive.
News Corp chair Michael Miller said the updates to the draft would be harmful to local media outlets and make an already uneven playing field even worse.
“These changes gut the incentive for tech platforms to strike fair deals with Australian media, right when those rules need strengthening, not softening,” he said.
That leads us to the other thing that happened yesterday on the media front, courtesy of Pauline Hanson.
She decided to exclude three major news outlets from attending one of her press conferences.
The Guardian, The Age and the ABC were not provided with the time or location of a One Nation media event in Victoria because Hanson didn’t want their scrutiny.
“I’m not putting up with the spin, gotcha moments, wanting to have a go at me,” she said at the press conference.
“[You] treat us totally different to what you do the other major political parties. Enough is enough.”
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s response to that little dummy spit pretty much summed it up well – describing the One Nation leader as a “political coward” and a “politician who thinks that she should have the right to say whatever she wants, but no one else should have the right to ask questions”.
But let’s give the last word on Senator Hanson’s media assault to Peter Greste, the executive director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.
“One of the strengths of our democracy is the ability of all journalists to robustly interrogate politicians on behalf of the people who hire them – the voters,” he said.
“It isn’t always comfortable, but that freedom is one of the reasons our political system is one of the world’s most stable and effective.
“By locking out the ABC, The Age and The Guardian, One Nation is directly weakening our democratic system.”
That’s the same Peter Greste who spent 400 days in a Cairo jail for simply doing his job as a journalist.
He knows what he’s talking about and his condemnation of Hanson’s antics holds great weight.
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
