Dilara Hamit<\/p>\n
21 August 2026\u2022Update: 21 August 2026<\/p>\n
Australia’s Parliament has passed legislation aimed at encouraging large digital platforms to pay news organizations for the journalism they use on their search and social media services.<\/p>\n
The News Bargaining Incentive allows eligible platforms to reduce their financial liability by entering into commercial agreements with at least eight Australian news businesses.<\/p>\n
Platforms that decline to make deals will instead pay a charge based on their Australian digital advertising revenue. The money collected will be distributed to the media industry through the News Journalism Payments scheme.<\/p>\n
The government said the legislation closes a loophole in the existing News Media Bargaining Code that allowed a platform to avoid payment obligations by removing news from its services.<\/p>\n
Commercial agreements must be completed before the end of a platform’s financial reporting period to count toward reducing its liability for that period.<\/p>\n
The legislation is intended to support news organizations of different sizes, including small and regional publishers.<\/p>\n
“Journalism is an essential part of a strong democracy,” Communications Minister Anika Wells said, adding that it holds individuals, companies and governments accountable.<\/p>\n
Wells said the laws would also support small and regional publishers that provide local communities with a voice.<\/p>\n
Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services Minister Daniel Mulino said the government was fulfilling its commitment to support Australian journalism while encouraging digital platforms to negotiate directly with publishers.<\/p>\n
Australia introduced the News Media Bargaining Code in 2021 to address the imbalance in bargaining power between major technology platforms and news organizations.<\/p>\n
The new incentive strengthens that system by making it more expensive for eligible platforms to avoid entering into commercial agreements altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dilara Hamit 21 August 2026\u2022Update: 21 August 2026 Australia’s Parliament has passed legislation aimed at encouraging large digital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44,296002],"class_list":["post-863238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}