The final form of the News Bargaining Incentive has been revealed, but key changes – and lack thereof – to the legislation left some in the news industry disappointed.   

When announcing the updates to the News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) legislation this week, Minister for Communications Anika Wells said the laws would support a diverse media for the benefit of all Australians. 

“Platforms should do deals directly with news organisations, and if they do not, they will pay,” she said. 

A strong statement – but the question remains whether the NBI will live up to it. 

Narrower revenue focus 

One of the most significant alterations to the legislation is the narrowing of the financial scope of penalties that would be charged to digital platforms that fail to meet their obligations under the NBI.  

The government previously proposed charging noncompliant digital platforms 2.25 per cent of their total gross Australian group revenue, but the charge base will now be limited to their Australian digital ad revenue. 

Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino said an increase of the charge rate to 2.5 per cent would leave the total amount of compensation the same. 

He told ABC AM the change was made because the government did not want to “discourage those large tech companies from having a growing footprint in Australia.”  

“What we do want, though, is that part of their business which is using news, to be fairly compensating the producers of that news,” he said. 

Speaking to News24, Mulino said the government would work closely with Treasury and the ATO to keep a “tight rein” on how digital platforms report their ad revenue to ensure those figures are reported in full. 

In a statement, News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller said the changes would “gut the incentive for tech platforms to strike fair deals with Australian media, right when those rules need strengthening, not softening”. 

Man of Many co-founder Scott Purcell was critical of an increase to the liability deduction from 170 per cent to 200 per cent for deals made with small news publishers, posting on LinkedIn that no tech platform would trade “a global precedent for a discount here, at any offset rate”. 

“This was never about price. Meta walked in 2024 and has not come back. Google’s existing arrangements are short renewals on reduced terms with publishers it was already dealing with, which is not the same thing as a market forming,” he said. 

“Nothing in a higher offset makes it worth negotiating, papering and administering hundreds of separate agreements across the long tail of Australian publishing.” 

What about the smaller players? 

The NBI will now require companies such as Meta, Google, TikTok and LinkedIn to reach deals with six Australian news publishers each, up from four, to avoid paying a penalty. 

Solstice Media managing director Paul Hamra told Mumbrella the quota was “concerning”. 

Digital Publishers Alliance chair Tim Duggan told the outlet his organisation was concerned that the failings of the News Media Bargaining Code “will be repeated and just a small number of large players will benefit due to the requirement for a minimum of just six deals.” 

Public Interest Publishers Alliance co-chair Lawrence Gibbons told PIJI the NBI would reinforce the status quo of Australia’s heavily concentrated media market. 

He said just as under the original News Media Bargaining Code, the NBI would allow tech giants to “very easily” acquit themselves of their responsibilities after making a few deals with major media entities. 

And for companies raking in billions from the Australian economy, Gibbons said it is unlikely the financial penalty proposed by the NBI would be a major deterrent. Instead, he said some companies may choose to pay a levy to pass the hassle of dispersing the funds over to the government. 

“There’s not going to be money that flows to small, medium-sized publishers unless the law requires that that happen,” he said. 

“So in our submission to the News Bargaining Incentive, our group basically called for … whether through a deal or through a levy, 25 per cent of all funds should be allocated to small and medium-sized publishers.” 

The News Journalism Payment Scheme will distribute any revenue collected by the NBI, include broadening the definition of journalists to include more “essential news” roles and freelancers.  

A grants program will also be established for small publishers and start-ups who do not meet the $150,000 annual revenue threshold for ACMA’s register of news businesses under the News Media Bargaining Code, as only publishers on the register will be eligible to receive payments under the News Journalism Payment Scheme. 

AI still off the table 

In the five years since the News Media Bargaining Code took effect, the news industry has had to contend with the evolution of generative AI, which picked up speed following the 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

From AI summaries atop search engine results to chatbots presenting content scraped from news websites, AI presents an additional barrier to clicks for news publishers already struggling to replace ad revenue lost to social media platforms. 

A University of Canberra report found nearly one in ten Australians report using tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity to get their news in 2026. 

But the update to the NBI shows no plans to incentivise AI platforms to make deals with Australian news publishers. 

When questioned during an initial press conference announcing the NBI changes and during subsequent interviews, Mulino repeatedly referred to a July speech from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in which he promised Australian creatives, including journalists, would retain ownership of the work. 

Mulino said with this work ongoing, AI had been “consciously separated” from the NBI. 

“What we’re looking at [regarding the NBI] is dealing with a situation where big tech platforms share news in its existing form and the fact that they should pay appropriate compensation for that,” he said. 

“There’s a separate process which is looking at the ways in which AI might manipulate or use the content of news to produce something new. And I’m confident that that process will see appropriate outcomes over time.” 

Progress welcomed 

Although there is concern over whether the NBI will achieve all it has set out to do, with equitable positive effects across Australia’s news landscape, there is hope that it will bring some relief for the beleaguered industry. 

Mulino said if digital platforms and news publishers reached fair commercial deals, a “rough” estimate of the benefit to the media would range between $200 million to $250 million.  

If digital platforms decide against entering agreements and pay penalties instead, he said the media could benefit from about $350 million to $400 million annually.  

Purcell said “real credit was due” for the final NBI design, with “most of what the independent sector asked for” included in the package. Hamra told Mumbrella that, without seeing the details, any move to broaden the scope for both the platforms and news media organisations is welcome. 

Mulino said NBI will be introduced into parliament “very early” in the spring session, which begins 11 August. 

Sezen Bakan