The communications minister has left the door open to including the ABC and SBS in the new code forcing Google and Facebook to pay for the value they receive from distributing Australian journalism.
Paul Fletcher also acknowledged on Wednesday that the competition regulator had received “quite a number of submissions” about the suitability of the proposed mechanism to resolve disputes between the big digital platforms and Australian media organisations.
On both of these issues, he said, the government would “weigh up, on the merits, all of the feedback that’s been received before making final decisions” – signalling his openness to refining the proposals before putting legislation to parliament later this year.
The tech giants have mounted a very public campaign against the proposed media industry code, with high-profile ads appearing on Google and YouTube and Facebook threatening to block all Australians from sharing news on its platform.
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The two companies have engaged in a major lobbying effort to persuade parliamentarians not to support the proposal, while the government has declared that it “won’t be bullied”.
Labor, the Greens and several crossbenchers have suggested that the ABC and SBS could be added to the ranks of Australian news publishers to benefit from the code, in the interests of helping to gain broad cross-party support for the legislation.
Speaking to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, Fletcher did not rule out shifting ground on the ABC and SBS, although he said the government would consider its position once the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had completed the consultation process.
“Both ABC and SBS have put in submissions arguing, unsurprisingly, that they ought to have the benefit of the remuneration provisions of the code,” he said.
Fletcher said it would “not at all” be correct to say the government had an ideological position against the ABC and SBS receiving the benefit of this code.
He said the government’s position was based on the assessment that it was Facebook and Google’s very strong position in the advertising market that had “greatly eroded the advertising revenues that privately owned media businesses depend upon to in turn be able to pay for journalism, which as we all know is expensive”.
“By contrast, the ABC in totality and SBS to a large extent have – their revenue comes from government. So the underlying policy problem which exists, the challenge which exists in terms of the privately owned businesses, does not exist in terms of the national broadcasters. That’s the policy logic for the position we have taken.”
Some concerns have also been raised about the workability of the mechanism for resolving disputes over how much Google and Facebook will have to pay publishers.
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Under the draft code, platforms must first negotiate with media companies, either individually or collectively, but an arbitrator is appointed if no agreement is reached after three months. Each side submits a final offer and the arbitrator must choose the most reasonable, rather than coming to some sort of compromise decision part-way between the two offers.
Asked whether he was also open to something other than “final-offer arbitration”, Fletcher said: “Quite a number of submissions have been made about the arbitration mechanism and so on – we’ll weigh all of that up in the mix.”
Fletcher did not say whether the government had a detailed plan to respond to Facebook blocking Australian news articles in protest against the code. “Our plan is to continue with our comprehensive public policy process where we’re systematically working through all the issues.”
Fletcher said it was not unprecedented for large global digital companies “to make threats in the context of seeking to influence the public policy outcome where there are things that they may not like”.
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