Labor says a new code to force Google and Facebook to pay for the value they receive from the distribution of Australian journalism must be “workable” and the regime should also be extended to include the ABC and SBS.
The shadow communications minister, Michelle Rowland, told Guardian Australia the code was yet to go through Labor’s internal deliberative processes, but she said the regime should cover the public broadcasters because the revenue would be used to boost regional news services, and the “merits of that argument are pretty clear”.
Rowland said given the complexity of the arrangements being proposed, the Morrison government would be best placed bringing a settled package to the parliament that is capable of securing majority support.
“This is a very complex proposal,” Rowland said on Monday. “This shouldn’t be something that gets amended on the floor of the parliament.”
The ABC and SBS are currently outside the proposed code. The Greens have signalled they could support the proposal if the government extended it to cover the national broadcaster and augmented it with a rescue package for the news wire service AAP.
The proposed code aims to address the imbalance in bargaining power between the news media and tech giants, and force the Google and Facebook to pay for the value they receive from use of Australian journalism.
It would also require Google and Facebook to provide media companies with information on changes that might affect their traffic, such as alterations to news rankings or the search algorithm. If they failed to comply, they could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was asked to develop the mandatory code in April by the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, after negotiations between the digital platforms, the ACCC and media companies stalled, and media companies experienced a sharp fall in ad revenue due to Covid-19.
Google and Facebook say the code is unworkable. The companies have engaged in a major lobbying effort to persuade parliamentarians not to support the proposal.
Rowland said Labor was listening to the tech companies, and was “meeting with anyone who asks”. She said some of the concerns raised by the tech companies were “not entirely baseless” and there needed to be a good response to queries about value transfer in the media ecosystem.
She said she had been briefed in detail by the ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, but there had been “zero outreach” from the government about the package.
“We understand how important this is,” Rowland said. “We understand it needs to happen. We need progress on it.”
She warned there was a risk of “new deserts” developing in the Australian media landscape because of the commercial pressures.
If Labor and the Greens insist that the code must cover the ABC and SBS, and the government disagrees, it will have to run the gauntlet of the Senate crossbench.
The Centre Alliance senator Stirling Griff told Guardian Australia on Monday the ABC and SBS needed to be compensated by the tech companies if their content was being used.
The communications minister, Paul Fletcher, has signalled it is unlikely the code will cover the broadcasters because the ABC and SBS “have secure government funding, and accordingly the ABC and SBS are not the policy focus when it comes to remuneration aspects of the proposed mandatory code”.
But Griff said it didn’t matter whether the organisations were publicly funded or not. The point was ensuring news organisations were compensated for the value they added.
Rex Patrick, the independent senator for South Australia, said he was yet to assess the proposal in detail, so he did not have a position on whether the taxpayer-funded broadcasters should be included.
But he said the code seemed like a sound idea. “I have a very strong interest in making sure we have a strong media, so something needs to change. I’m not yet across the finer details, but my predisposition is to get proper payments for media organisations that do the hard work.”
