Submission to the News Bargaining Incentive Draft Legislation
MEAA strongly welcomes the proposed changes to the News Media Bargaining Incentive. Under the proposed legislation, large digital platforms will face financial penalties for failure to make adequate commercial deals with news publishers, regardless of whether they carry news content. In the case that digital platforms do not make commercial deals, the government has outlined that they will be required to pay the Incentive. This Incentive would then be distributed to news organisations on the basis of their employment of journalists, calculated at an FTE rate.
MEAA is strongly supportive of the government’s proposal to tie funds delivered through the Incentive to journalists’ jobs. There is a strong public interest justification in the delivery of funds to support journalists’ jobs. It ensures that funding delivered to news media organisations is spent on the production of public interest journalism. Without such guardrails, there would be no clear assurance that funds delivered would be used to support journalism and were not simply handed out as executive bonuses or shareholder returns.
Submission to the News Bargaining Incentive Draft Legislation
Last update: May 19, 2026
