A proposed bill would compel Meta, Google, and TikTok to fund Australian journalism.
The Australian government, which has already laid down strict rules for American tech giants operating within the country, now seeks to extract funding for local journalism from these platforms.
The nation on Tuesday unveiled draft legislation for a “News Bargaining Incentive,” a measure that would compel major tech players, including Meta, Google, and TikTok, to strike commercial deals with news organizations or face a 2.25 percent levy on their Australian revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal. To encourage compliance, the bill would offer offsets of either 150 percent or 170 percent, effectively trimming the payable tax. Notably, the plan would not target AI-focused businesses.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters that the bargaining incentive is expected to generate around 200 to 250 million Australian dollars, with every dollar earmarked for journalists.
Australia’s communications minister, Anika Wells, frames the proposal as a means of updating and repairing the country’s older News Media Bargaining Code, which began operating in 2021. Like the new bill, the earlier code urged designated tech platforms to compensate news organizations for their content. Google and Meta initially entered into agreements with various outlets, but when Meta’s contract expired in 2024, the company declined to renew, arguing that only a small fraction of its content was news-related.
A Meta spokesperson criticized Australia’s latest proposal as a “digital services tax,” remarking on X that: “News organizations opt to post content on our platforms because they get value from it. We don’t take their news content. Yet the tax applies whether or not news content appears on our platforms.”
Google has also resisted the tax, stating in a briefing that the plan “ignores the fact that Google already has commercial agreements with the news industry, misunderstands how the ad market changed and mandates payments from some companies while arbitrarily excluding platforms like Microsoft, Snapchat and OpenAI—despite the major shift in how people consume news.”
The Australian government has a history of intervening in its information ecosystem. In December, it barred individuals under 16 from using social media platforms. Enforcement has been uneven, and a number of younger Australians have managed to circumvent the ban. Rather than acknowledging that minors can navigate restrictions, the government threatened to sue Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube for noncompliance.
The aim of preserving local journalism may appear benevolent. Surely, who wouldn’t want to sustain original reporting? Yet the new framework would extend benefits beyond small-town reporters who hustle for stories. While it creates incentives for tech companies to partner with smaller outlets, it could also allow these firms to reduce their tax exposure by partnering with larger entities. Australia’s major outlets—News Corp Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Nine Entertainment Co.—have publicly supported the code and would likely be its principal beneficiaries.
Even if the reform succeeds in boosting beleaguered newsrooms, it would not address the structural challenges facing the journalism sector. The plan would entrench a model in which Australian newsrooms depend on a foreign tech industry for survival. A more enduring, though tougher, path forward would be for media organizations to cultivate audiences and secure funding without a government intermediary.
