News Journalism Payments Bill 2026, News Journalism Payments (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2026
Mr FRENCH (Moore) (19:25): I rise to support the News Journalism Payments Bill 2026 and the associated bills. Politicians and journalists have a curious relationship. As a relatively new backbencher from Western Australia, I cannot claim to spend my days surrounded by the press gallery, but I certainly read what journalists write and say about politics, and I suspect they occasionally notice what people like me say and do.
So it's less a relationship of constant physical proximity and more one conducted through articles, interviews, social media and the occasional phone call. Politicians sometimes think journalists only call when there is bad news. Journalists sometimes think politicians only answer when there is good news.
And there is probably enough evidence on both sides to keep that argument going for another 100 years. But underneath all of that is something far more important: a strong democracy needs a strong and independent media—not a media that agrees with government, not a media that gives politicians an easy run and certainly not a media that writes the headlines we would have preferred to have written ourselves.
If favourable coverage were the test for supporting journalism, I suspect most members in this House would develop very strong and rapidly changing views about which publications deserve support. Independent journalism exists in part to make people in positions of power uncomfortable. Journalists ask questions politicians would sometimes prefer not to answer.
They examine government decisions and they investigate powerful institutions. Occasionally they even discover a politician has used 12 paragraphs to avoid answering a yes-or-no question. I am told this can happen!
Journalism has a role in our democracy that goes well beyond another product being sold in the market. It helps Australians understand what governments are doing, what businesses are doing and what is happening in their communities. But the business model that paid for much of that journalism has changed.
For decades, newspapers, television networks and other publishers could rely heavily on advertising revenue. People advertised houses in the paper. Businesses advertised on television and radio.
Classified advertising helped support local newspapers. That revenue helped pay the journalists covering our parliament, courts and communities. And then the internet transformed the market.
Advertising moved online and enormous global digital platforms became some of the biggest beneficiaries. The journalism remained valuable, but an increasing share of advertising revenue that once supported it went somewhere else. Between 2006 and 2022, commercial broadcasters' share of Australian advertising expenditure fell from 43 per cent to 17 per cent.
That is a fundamental change in the economics of Australian media. Good journalism costs money. Someone has to employ the reporters who investigate and explain what is happening.
Someone has to put journalists on the ground, in the courts, parliaments and communities, and someone has to edit, check and publish the work properly. A Facebook post written in 30 seconds is not a replacement for a journalist who has spent three days checking a story—although judging by some social media these days, plenty of people remain determined to test that proposition.
Australia first responded to the imbalance between digital platforms and news businesses through the news media and digital platforms mandatory bargaining code in 2021. That framework helped produce commercial agreements between digital platforms and Australian media companies, but it had a weakness: a platform could potentially reduce or avoid bargaining obligations by simply reducing or removing news from its service.
These bills address that problem. The principle is straightforward: if very large digital platforms derive substantial advertising revenue from their Australian operations, they should make a reasonable contribution towards sustaining Australian journalism. Importantly, the government's preferred outcome is not collecting a charge.
We want digital platforms and Australian news businesses to reach commercial deals. The charge exists to create an incentive. The news bargaining incentive applies only to very large social media and search services.
A service group must have more than $250 million in relevant Australian digital advertising revenue. A social media service must have at least five million average monthly active Australian users, while a search service must have at least 10 million. So we are talking about some of the largest technology businesses operating in Australia.
Debate interrupted.