News Media Bargaining (Administration) Bill 2026

Ms STEGGALL (Warringah) (11:49): I rise to support the amendments moved by the member for Curtin and to commend them to the minister and to the House. The principle behind this legislation is straightforward. Major digital platforms should not be able to derive value from Australian journalism without making a fair contribution to the people and organisations that produce it.

I've argued for years that our news media are engaged in a David and Goliath battle with global social media and search platforms. These platforms have enormous market power and they increasingly control how news is distributed, how it is discovered and whether it is seen at all. This bill and these amendments are important attempts to correct that imbalance, but we must ensure that the legislation's benefits do not flow overwhelmingly to the largest media companies while smaller, local and independent publishers remain on the sidelines, so these amendments are really important.

The bill currently reserves only five per cent of any revenue collected through the charge for grants to smaller news organisations. These amendments would increase that share to 15 per cent. They would also expand eligibility for those grants to news organisations with annual income below $20 million, rather than limiting the program to the extremely narrow group of publishers with revenue below $150,000.

Importantly, priority would be given to news organisations that are not otherwise eligible to receive payments under the main scheme. In practical terms, these amendments create a fairer opportunity for small, local, independent and emerging publishers. This is particularly important all over Australia, but especially in Warringah.

We're fortunate to have dedicated local publishers, including the Manly Observer, the Northern Beaches Advocate and the Tawny Frogmouth. These outlets report on the issues that directly affect our community, council decisions, local development, transport failures, environmental threats, small businesses, schools, community organisations and public health. During emergencies, they provide trusted and immediate local information.

They attend the meetings that national outlets do not. They follow stories after the television cameras have gone, and they know the community because they are part of it. In 2024, I congratulated the Manly Observer on launching its own news app.

It became a hugely popular news app in Australia's Apple App Store. That remarkable response demonstrated the demand for trusted local reporting, but it also demonstrated the length to which a small publisher must go to avoid being entirely dependent on the algorithms and commercial decisions of a global platform. Local journalism should not have to survive solely through ingenuity, unpaid work and goodwill.

Strong local journalism is also one of our most fundamental defences against misinformation. When trusted news disappears from people's feeds, it is not necessarily replaced by careful or verified reporting. It's replaced by rumour, outrage, conspiracy and divisive content designed to keep people scrolling.

A healthy democracy needs national investigative journalism, but it also needs to have someone reporting from the council chamber at a local government level, a community level. It needs to have someone covering local court proceedings, asking questions about delayed road projects, investigating illegal vape sales near schools or connecting a family in crisis with local support.

These amendments simply ensure that a meaningful share of the revenue is available to smaller organisations to broaden the range of eligible publishers and prioritise those that cannot access the principal payment scheme. If the purpose of this bill is to sustain Australian journalism, then it must sustain journalism at every level, not merely organisations that already possess the greatest negotiating power.

I urge the government and the House to support these amendments.