Who Pays, Who Decides
Australia has proposed taxing digital giants Meta, Google and TikTok a proportion of their revenue to pay for news reporters, with the government releasing draft legislation Tuesday that it intends to introduce to Parliament by July 2. The plan would create a financial incentive for the social media companies to strike deals with news organizations to pay for journalism, while the state sets the terms of the squeeze. The proposed News Bargaining Incentive would charge major platforms that choose not to strike commercial deals with news publishers a 2.25% tax on their Australian revenue.
The platforms would be given offsets and their overall costs would be lowered if they agree to pay publishers for journalism, the government said. The government expects the incentive would raise between 200 to 250 million Australian dollars ($144 million-$179 million) a year, about as much as the platforms paid news outlets when the News Media Bargaining Code was working at its peak. The government would distribute that income among news organizations based on how many journalists each organization employed, Communication Minister Anika Wells said.
The People at the Bottom
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a monetary value needed to be attached to journalists’ work. He said, “It shouldn’t just be able to be taken by a large multinational corporation and used to generate profits for that organisation with no compensation appropriate for the people who produce that creative content,” and added, “We think that investment in journalism is critical to a healthy democracy.”
That line lands in a system where the state is trying to manage the flow of money between large platforms and news organizations, while journalists themselves remain the labor being priced, counted, and allocated from above. The government’s formula would send money to news organizations based on how many journalists they employ, turning reporting into a ledger item inside a managed market.
The move is Australia’s second legislative attempt to make the platforms pay for the Australian news text and images that their users view. Digital platforms had been pressured to strike deals with Australian news publishers to pay for journalism by legislation passed in 2021 that created the country’s News Media Bargaining Code. The platforms chose to reach commercial deals with news creators rather than be forced into arbitration and have a judge set the price. But they have since avoided renewing those deals by removing news from their services.
What the Platforms Say
The tax would apply to Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., and TikTok, which is majority-owned by U.S.-backed investors. Opposing the proposed legislation, Meta said news organizations “voluntarily post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so.” Meta said, “The idea that we take their news content is simply wrong. This proposed legislation, which would apply to platforms regardless of whether news content even appears on our services, is nothing more than a digital services tax.” Meta added, “A government-mandated transfer of wealth from one industry to another, with no connection to the value exchanged, will not deliver a sustainable or innovative news sector. Instead, it will create a news industry dependent on a government-administered subsidy scheme.”
Google said, “we reject the need for this tax.” Google said, “It ignores the fact that Google already has commercial agreements with the news industry, misunderstands how the ad market changed and mandates payments from some companies while arbitrarily excluding platforms like Microsoft, Snapchat and OpenAI -- despite the major shift in how people consume news.” TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. All the targeted platforms are American.
The arrangement still runs through the same top-down machinery: legislation, taxation, offsets, distribution formulas, and bargaining pressure. The platforms are not being asked by the public they profit from; they are being managed by the state, which decides who pays, who qualifies, and how the money is divided.
Sovereignty, Not Consent
U.S. critics have argued that Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code had disproportionately cost American corporations. Albanese was not concerned by potential pushback from the United States. He said, “We’re a sovereign nation and my government will make decisions based upon the Australian national interest.”
That is the language of the apparatus speaking for itself: national interest, sovereign decision-making, and a revenue scheme designed from above. The government says the incentive would support journalism, but the mechanism remains a state-managed transfer between corporate giants and news organizations, with journalists’ labor turned into a bargaining chip and the public left to watch the deal-making from outside the room.