For years, Australia has tried to make tech giants pay the newsrooms whose journalism appears on their platforms. Here’s how the rules work, why Meta walked away, and what the new incentive changes.
Most Australians now find news through search engines and social media. Those platforms earn huge amounts from advertising, while traditional news outlets have lost much of their advertising revenue, leading to job cuts and closures, especially in regional areas.
Successive governments have argued tech platforms benefit from journalism they don’t pay for, and that they hold too much power in negotiations with publishers.
The 2021 bargaining code
In 2021, Parliament passed the News Media Bargaining Code. It allowed the Government to force a platform into binding negotiations with news publishers, with an independent arbitrator deciding the price if they couldn’t agree.
Facebook briefly blocked news for Australian users in protest. But before the code was ever formally applied, Google and Meta signed voluntary deals with many publishers, worth an estimated $200 million a year in total.
In 2024, Meta announced it would not renew its deals, saying people don’t come to Facebook for news. Google renewed many of its agreements.
The News Bargaining Incentive
The Government responded with a new approach, the News Bargaining Incentive. Legislation passed Parliament in August 2026.
It applies a charge to large digital platforms, including Meta, Google and TikTok, based on a percentage of their Australian advertising revenue. Platforms can reduce or eliminate the charge by striking commercial deals with Australian news publishers, with extra credit for deals with smaller and regional outlets.
The idea is to make paying for news the cheaper option, rather than forcing platforms into negotiations directly.
The arguments
Publishers and journalists’ groups say the scheme is needed to fund public interest journalism, especially local news.
The tech companies oppose it. Meta argues it is effectively a tax on businesses that don’t benefit from news, and has raised the prospect of removing news from its platforms again. The U.S. Government has also criticised Australia’s approach as unfair to American companies, raising trade tensions.
Critics also worry that most of the money could flow to the biggest media companies rather than to small newsrooms, and that it leaves the industry dependent on tech platforms.
How Meta, Google and TikTok respond, whether by striking deals, paying the charge or pulling back on news, will shape the future of Australia’s media industry.
