Interview with Peter Stefanovic, News24

Subjects: push to make tech giants pay for news, public interest journalism, house prices Peter Stefanovic: Okay, Trudy McIntosh, thank you. And well, that leads us quite nicely into the Assistant Treasurer, Daniel Mulino. Good to see you this morning Dan.

So we’ve already got some reaction to it today, but first of all, can you explain how you came to these changes? Daniel Mulino: Good morning, Pete, and thanks for having me on. So can I just start by saying that this is a really important reform that is going to support public interest journalism in Australia, which is so important to our democracy.

Now, we’ve made a few changes during the consultation period that’s just finished. We received 85 submissions from a wide range of sources. One which was just referred to between yourself and Trudy is that we’ve changed the charge base in relation to Big Tech from their total revenue to the advertising revenue, and that really means that we’re now going to charge that part of their business that is using the news, but we’ve upped the charge rate, and based on the advice that I’ve received from Treasury, that will mean the total amount that is required to be provided to media through deals is the same.

But what we’re doing is making sure that this is on a firmer public policy footing going forward. We’ve also included professional networking sites going forward, so we’re including LinkedIn, and it was really important that we did all of these changes holistically, because including LinkedIn meant that we’re including Microsoft, and LinkedIn is a small but material part of their business, and we needed to have those first changes in order to do that.

Stefanovic: Just on that, what about ChatGPT, Anthropic, et cetera, which also use news content in their answers; are they included? So they’re not included in this mechanism, but if you go back, a couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister gave a landmark speech in relation to AI, and what he said there very clearly was that the government is going to do what is needed in order to support people who create content and support people who do that in relation to copyright laws.

And so there’s a separate process that is going to be worked through led by the Attorney‑General which will encompass AI, to the extent that they – Stefanovic: Okay, but on the topic of the news though, Stefanovic: – why wouldn’t they be included here? Well, no, because that other process is the appropriate process to deal with – Stefanovic: – news when it uses news content through AI.

Stefanovic: It’s a different kind of process than, for example, just sharing a news story through Meta or through LinkedIn. Stefanovic: Okay. Let’s get back to our CEO, Michael Miller, who you might have just seen his statement already, we’ve just played it to you, we’ll just bring it up again for those who might have missed it.

But he says, ‘These changes gut the incentive for tech platforms to strike fair deals with Australian media, right when those rules need strengthening, not softening’. I won’t read the whole thing, but he’s highly critical of it so far. Have you weakened these laws now, Dan?

No. Well, as I say, the core thing that we need to remember is that the total amount of payments that will be required to be made under deals made with the media in order to acquit their obligations under the NBI will the same based on advice that I’ve had from Treasury. So there’s no weakening in terms of the amount of revenue that will be provided, the amount of support that will be provided to the media.

Stefanovic: So that’s not the case, and that remains the public policy intent, so nothing’s changed in terms of what we’re trying to achieve through this measure. The other thing, of course, that remains absolutely central to this is that under the old arrangements Big Tech could just walk away. What the NBI says is that if they avoid making deals they’re going to end up paying more to the media.

Stefanovic: That incentive remains and is very powerful and will draw some of these Big Tech companies into making deals. Stefanovic: Yeah, but if they’re not playing along in the past, I mean they’re a law unto themselves. I mean how do you guarantee that they’d even cough up if they did the wrong thing?

Right. But the whole – the difference with the incentive is, if they say we’re just not going to make deals, they actually are then required under this legislation to pay more, they’re going to have to pay 50 per cent more, so that’s the incentive that is introduced in this legislation. Stefanovic: So if they all were to say, and I’m confident that some of them will enter deals, but if they were to say ‘we won’t enter deals’, then media will end up getting more money, and that’s the mechanism that Minister Wells is responsible for.

Stefanovic: We are hoping not to raise money through this, we’re hoping there will be deals, but if money is raised, then it is distributed straight back to the media through the mechanism that she’s responsible for. Stefanovic: All right. Tell me this, Dan: by pegging the charge purely to revenue in Australia, ad revenue in Australia, how do you stop platforms restructuring or reallocating revenue reporting to shrink their exposure?

So, look, regardless as to the charge base, we were going to have to work very closely with our regulatory agencies, with Treasury, with ATO, to make sure that we were keeping a tight rein on the way in which they report their revenue. So whether it was total revenue in Australia or advertising revenue in Australia, we were going to have to work very closely to make sure that we were getting robust figures reported to government.

So that was the case under the old regime and the current regime. Stefanovic: All right. Just while I’ve got you, another item of news now today, house prices, it shows the biggest drop in price falls since your government came to power.

Now this fall is beyond the slower rise in prices that the budget predicted. So was it a deliberate ploy to crash the market? No, well, Pete, what I’d say is that house prices move due to all sorts of things.

They moved due to the interest rate cycle, they moved due to sentiment, and you really need to look, I think, at the medium term trajectory of housing prices. And what our changes will do is, firstly, they will see a whole lot of people moving into houses rather than renting, but the modelling remains that over the medium term, when you take out all the other things affecting house prices, we expect house prices to continue to grow over the medium term, but just a bit slower as a result of the changes that we’re making in order to make housing more affordable for young people.

Stefanovic: Do you have any data or any numbers on how many home owners who took up that 5% Deposit Scheme are now in negative equity? No, well, again, I think what we need to look at is the way that we’re changing the structure of the housing market, we’re making it fundamentally fairer for younger people. What had happened since 1999 is that house prices for 20 years plus had grown twice as fast as incomes, and that wasn’t sustainable.

We needed to change the system to level it up for young people. Young people were going to auctions, and the investors they were bidding against had the whole tax system on their side. So we’re levelling up the playing field, we’re making it much easier for home buyers.

This isn’t about week‑to‑week changes, what we’re doing is changing the settings in the housing market for the medium term and the longer term to make them fairer and to get more young people into home ownership. Stefanovic: All right. Dan Mulino with us on a Monday morning.

Thank you so much, Dan.