The Australian government has announced plans for a levy on tech giants designed to incentivise them to do commercial deals with publishers.
The News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) would require large search and social media services to pay 2.25% on their Australian revenue.
This money would be “distributed back to the news media sector”, the government said, to “support the employment and critical work of journalists”.
If this formula was adopted in the UK, Google and Meta alone would be paying £650 million towards supporting the news industry (per Press Gazette’s revenue estimates).
Tech companies can offset the levy by entering commercial agreements withAustraliannews media businesses for the use or production of news content. Deals are the “preferred model”, the government said.
A higher amount (170%) of the potential levy will be offset if deals are made with small to medium news publishers, versus 150% offset for agreements with large news businesses. So making commercial deals could elimate the need to pay the levy altogether.
The legislation would be applicable to tech giants with revenue above $250m from Australia. This includesGoogle, Meta andTiktok.
The proposal is designed to address a loophole in Australia’s existing News Media Bargaining Code, which was intended to force the likes of Google and Meta to pay for news on their platforms.
In 2024 Meta closed the Facebook News tab in Australia (as well as the US) anddid not renew licensing agreements it had with news publishers.Meta also previously experimented with removing all news from Facebook and Instagram in the country.
Google does already have existing commercial agreements with news publishers in Australia.
Source: Press Gazette
