News Journalism Payments Bill 2026, News Journalism Payments (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2026
Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (19:11): The News Journalism Payments Bill 2026 and related bills come at an important moment for the future of public-interest journalism in Australia. At a time of misinformation, disinformation and declining trust in institutions, robust public-interest reporting is more important than ever before. Every day, journalists provide the scrutiny, accountability and trusted information that keep our democracy strong.
That work happens on the national stage but also across communities in Australia. Local papers cover council decisions, court proceedings, schools, local businesses, community events and emergencies. They give a voice to the multicultural and First Nations communities, to regional towns and suburban neighbourhoods—a voice that larger media organisations can't always reach.
But the mastheads and the outlets doing this work are operating in a media environment that has dramatically changed in recent years. Journalism has been transformed by the rise of global digital media platforms. These platforms have become central to how Australians, especially young Australians, are accessing their news.
They're capturing an increasing share of Australia's media landscape. But the business model that has traditionally funded journalism has not adapted to that change. Advertising revenue has shifted to digital platforms, which is putting growing financial pressure on news organisations and the journalism that they produce.
This is not a new problem. The Morrison government's news bargaining code was an attempt to address this issue of the sustainability of public-interest journalism by using the bargaining power of digital platforms to support Australian journalism. The code generated between $200 million and $250 million a year through commercial agreements between digital platforms and Australian news businesses.
But, critically, like many things produced by the Morrison government, that code didn't work. Tech companies were able to simply opt out of the code by removing news content from their platforms. This happened briefly in 2021, when Meta, then Facebook, responded to the bargaining arrangements by removing news content entirely from its platform.
While this proved to be only a brief blip, in April 2024 Meta announced that it would not renew commercial deals with Australian news media companies. Those were deals worth an estimated $70 million a year. This resulted in the news tab being removed from Facebook.
Thankfully, we didn't see the worst-case scenario of a full news blackout across all Meta platforms, but that code is still failing Australians. Platforms can still reduce or withdraw their support for Australian journalism simply by changing how they choose to distribute and present news. There could have been a much worse outcome in Australia under our current code.
In Canada, the Online News Act came into effect in 2023. Meta subsequently blocked news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada, meaning that Canadians have now lost access to all news from publishers on those platforms. That remains a real risk with this legislation.
To deny people access to news is to deny them immediate access to information about their country and about their democracy. For a generation that increasingly gets all of its news through social media, that would mean denying our young people access to the information that they need to actively participate in a democracy. In front of the House, we now have a proposal that recognises that news does have value and that the digital platforms benefiting from the provision of journalism should contribute to its sustainability, while creating a financial obligation the platforms can't simply avoid by removing news.
These bills collectively introduce the news media incentive. Under the scheme, significant social media and search services will have an incentive to enter commercial agreements with eligible Australian news businesses. If platforms don't enter enough eligible agreements, they will instead be liable for a charge based on their Australian digital advertising revenue.
In that case, the money raised through that charge will be distributed to support Australian news journalism through the news journalism payments scheme. I believe that what the government is proposing is better than what we've had previously. It will promote sustainability and diversity of the Australian news media sector, but, without further refinements, many small and medium-sized publishers will struggle to access commercial agreements with digital platforms.
I'm glad to see that the Albanese government has backflipped on a carve-out for professional networking sites, bringing Microsoft owned LinkedIn within the scope of this incentive, but the government has still chosen not to include AI companies in the incentive, and that is a significant regulatory gap. AI is rapidly changing how Australians find and consume information.
Generative AI enabled platforms can summarise journalism and other forms of content. They can answer questions and provide information without users visiting the publisher. As a result, news organisations are now facing a zero-click era in which AI is reducing traffic to the original journalistic sources, potentially, to zero.
Nine Entertainment reported that disruptions from AI were the reason that 30 staff from theAge and theSydney Morning Herald were made redundant last month. It wasn't the first batch of redundancies, and it will not be the last. Excluding AI platforms from the incentive is a very significant missed opportunity for this government at the very moment that their market power and their impact on journalism is beginning to really accelerate.
If the principle of this legislation is that digital platforms that benefit from Australian journalism should contribute to its sustainability, then that principle has to also extend to AI enabled platforms. I call on the government to address this regulatory gap so that the news media incentive covers all tech and search companies, including AI services, that profit from Australian journalism.
But the question is not only who is required to contribute to the incentive but also who ultimately benefits from it. The intention of these reforms is to promote diversity in Australian journalism, so I'm pleased to see the government has made changes to broaden the number of news outlets that tech companies have to strike deals with in order to avoid the charge.
The minimum number of deals required to fully offset the charge has increased from six to eight, a change designed to open more opportunities for smaller and regional publishers. Further, each financial year, a digital platform may not use eligible expenditure in relation to any one news business to offset more than a quarter, 25 per cent, of the incentive. To encourage deals with smaller publishers, the charge is offset by a 150 per cent uplift rate for agreements with large businesses and 200 per cent if the deal is with small or medium-sized businesses.
These elements address the risk that the news media incentive could consolidate funding among a handful of large media organisations while leaving smaller publishers unfunded. This is to ensure that the incentive doesn't create what the industry has called 'news deserts', where metropolitan coverage is funded, but regional coverage is not. Despite these measures to broaden the beneficiaries of the incentive, the 25 per cent cap is still somewhat problematic.
The cap limits the amount of incentive liability that can be offset through expenditure with any one news business, but it doesn't prevent a platform from concentrating its overall commercial expenditure within a small number of large media organisations. A platform could, in theory, allocate four companies 99 per cent of its money and split just one per cent among four additional companies.
If the government's objective is genuine diversity, then the scheme should do more than prevent concentration in a single media organisation with that 25 per cent cap. It should actively foster the inclusion of larger numbers of smaller organisations within the platform's coverage. The charge itself also deserves scrutiny.
Following the exposure draft, the government's proposal for the charge has changed. The news media incentive charge was initially based on the annual total revenue of in-scope technology companies, but the final legislation narrows the charge base to the annual digital advertising revenue of those platforms, with the charge set at 2.5 per cent. There's a rationale for this change.
It means that revenue from unrelated products like workplace software or cloud services is not inadvertently captured by the scheme. But the change has narrowed the base of the charge. If digital platforms and search companies fail to strike enough deals, they'll be forced to pay a charge that'll be 2.5 per cent of their Australian digital advertising revenue.
The government has compensated for the narrowing of the revenue base by moving a small increase in the charge from 2.25 per cent to 2.5 per cent, but it is a modest accommodation which may not entirely make up for that shortfall. Revenue collected from the charge will be distributed to eligible news organisations through the News Journalism Payment Scheme. These funds will support the production of core news content in Australia.
Of the charge funds, 10 per cent will be set aside for grants which include five per cent to fund the Australian Associated Press in recognition of its public interest role and a further five per cent for small organisations that aren't eligible for funding from deals under this scheme. This charge distribution mechanism favours larger organisations again. To be included on the Australian Communications and Media Authority's register of eligible news businesses for charge distribution, an organisation has to generate more than $150,000 in annual revenue.
Clearly this is going to exclude many small and independent outlets, so there is an ongoing equity concern here. For example, of the roughly 200 Local & Independent News Association members, 35 per cent will fall under this threshold. The five per cent grant for small organisations is promising, but it's not sufficient to support the diverse range of publishers operating in Australia, particularly in regional areas.
It's been recommended that at least 25 per cent of deals should be made with small- and medium-sized businesses, and that grants should specifically address small newsrooms. I will support amendments to this bill to increase the grant stream under sections 94 and 95 of the payments bill from five per cent to 15 per cent of the collected revenue charge with that in mind.
The final point that I'd like to address relates to how payments under the charge are calculated according to eligible editorial capacity. Essentially, this is the number of eligible editorial workers employed or engaged to produce news content. Given this focus, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance's submission on the exposure draft of this legislation stressed an important point—digital platform funding should support journalists' jobs.
It shouldn't just flow through to shareholders or to executives. The purpose of this legislation is not to subsidise media companies for the sake of subsidising media companies. It is to sustain journalists and it's to support the journalists who are so vital to their work and who inform and engage us every day.
That means that the government should consider stronger safeguards, requiring payments received under the scheme to support the employment of journalists and the production of public interest journalism. If this legislation is to succeed, it must do more than simply transfer money from the big digital platforms to the big media companies. It has to strengthen journalism that Australians actually receive and read and learn from in our cities, in our suburbs and in our regions.
It must support diverse newsrooms, sustain local reporting and ensure that the benefits of this scheme reach the communities that need them most. I endorse the principle behind these reforms, but the parliament must ensure that the final scheme is broad enough to capture the platforms shaping our information environment, including AI services, that it is diverse enough to support more than the largest media organisations and that it is accountable enough to ensure that funding delivers more journalism, not simply more revenue.