Interview with James Glenday, News Breakfast, ABC

Subjects: News Bargaining Incentive, fuel excise, house prices James Glenday: Now, back to the day’s news, because the Albanese government has today unveiled changes to its News Bargaining Incentive legislation that aims to force tech giants to strike financial deals with Australian news publishers. The federal Assistant Treasurer is Daniel Mulino and he joins us now, Daniel, welcome back to the program.

Daniel Mulino: Oh, thanks very much for having me on, James. Now I suspect all of our viewers have not followed this as closely as some of us in the media have, so can you just briefly remind us what you want the News Bargaining Incentive to achieve? Well, look, we know that public interest journalism is critical to the health of our democracy.

We also know that the financial underpinnings of media organisations are being undermined, in part by the fact that big digital platforms are using news without appropriately compensating the media that creates that news. And so what the News Bargaining Incentive says is that if big tech platforms don’t enter into reasonable and fair agreements with media organisations to pay for the content, then they will have to pay an incentive which will then be distributed back to media organisations.

And the way it works is that if big tech platforms don’t enter into agreements they’ll actually have to pay more, and that’s where the incentive comes in. They’ll have to pay 50 per cent more, and that’s the strong way in which this scheme will hopefully lead to deals, sustainable deals between tech platforms and media organisations that employ journalists. I guess the big question is, are you expecting these massive tech giants, which have huge amounts of resources, to take you to court over this?

Are you expecting a big legal challenge? Well, look, we’ve heard nothing specific, and we’re confident in these laws, and we’re progressing forward with them obviously. Look, we see this as an extremely important policy area that the government has been committed to for a long time.

We’ve gone through rounds of consultation because this is quite novel and complex. We wanted to get it right. But we’re now at the point where we’re very close to introducing this legislation early in the spring sittings, and this will be critically important for arresting some of the decline in the number of journalists in this country.

So, I think a lot of our viewers will be familiar with seeing news on platforms like Facebook. It’s interesting you’re going to include LinkedIn as well. Why did you decide that business or professional networking sites needed to be included?

So, when the News Media Bargaining Code was first developed by the previous government, and we broadly supported that of course, when that was developed LinkedIn was not so central to the thinking. At that time, it didn’t have a large number of users relative to the other platforms, and the way that it operated was mainly as an employment site, a networking site.

Since that time, the number of users has increased significantly, and also the amount of news that’s being shared on LinkedIn has increased. So, it’s appropriate now not to carve them out but to say that if they reach the thresholds in the legislation that they should then be included. On another topic, the excise discount on fuel is gone from today.

Given the ongoing uncertainty in the Middle East and the uncertainty surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, what was the thinking behind not extending this excise for a little bit longer, this cut? So, the three‑month reduction in the excise by 32 cents was a really important measure that benefitted a whole range of people who were vulnerable to increases in the price of petrol and diesel.

That included tradies in the outer suburbs, people who weren’t close to public transport, people in the regions, and it had a really positive impact in softening the impact for them. When we came to the end of the 3 months, we, as you know, had a one‑month extension at a half rate, and that was an important way of tapering off that benefit. The benefit was always intended to be temporary, and so we’ve flagged right from the beginning that it was meant to help people with the worst of the impacts of that crisis, but that it would always at some point come off.

House prices seem like they’re falling across more of the country at the moment, we’re seeing slowdowns in other cities that have previously been having very, very big gains, like in Perth and also Brisbane. Are you happy to see this? Is this one of the intentions from the Budget?

The intention of the Budget is really to embark upon structural change, much needed and overdue structural change to make it easier for first home buyers, for young people to get into the housing market. And so that’s what’s motivated the negative gearing and CGT changes. When it comes to house prices that jump around from week to week and month to month, we do know that a range of factors affect house prices.

That could include overall sentiment, interest rates, the business cycle. So, what we’ve modelled is that over the medium term we expect house prices will continue to increase but at a slightly slower rate as a result of the changes that we’ve brought in, but to still increase. But what we’ve also modelled is that over the medium term we expect 75,000 individuals and families to own their own home rather than be renting and that’s really the important structural change that we’re seeking.

Daniel, thank you very much for joining us again.