Joint media release
Shadow Minister for Communications and Digital Safety, Senator the Hon Sarah Henderson
Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Financial Services, Hon Kevin Hogan MP
Australian journalism is vital and Australian newsrooms deserve to be properly compensated for the value of their content.
The Coalition will carefully examine the News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) scheme bill, introduced in the Parliament today, to ensure it drives genuine commercial bargaining with digital platforms and delivers sustainable investment across Australia’s media sector.
“The NBI scheme must properly compensate journalists and news organisations for the use of Australian news content on digital platforms,” Senator Henderson said.
“Keeping our media sector strong means ensuring the work of Australian journalists is fairly valued and journalism jobs are protected.”
“For more than two years Labor failed to enforce the world-first News Media Bargaining Code established by the Coalition, leaving Australian media companies and journalists facing unnecessary uncertainty.”
“The media sector has warned that Labor’s previous proposals would weaken the incentive for digital platforms to strike fair commercial deals, reduce the funding available for Australian journalism and put further newsroom jobs at risk.”
Shadow Assistant Treasurer Kevin Hogan said: “The Coalition will closely scrutinise the legislation, and the test is whether it delivers fair and sustainable compensation for Australian journalism, rather than another free kick for multinational tech giants.”
“The accurate calculation of advertising revenues earned by the digital platforms is of paramount importance. The Coalition wants to ensure there are no loopholes which allow some of this revenue to fall outside the scheme.”
“As part of our scrutiny of this bill, we will examine the scope of Treasury’s powers to ensure the digital platforms will be held to account if refuse to play ball under this scheme.”