The Australian media industry has weathered years of turbulence, but a significant shift may now be on the horizon. The Albanese government has released draft legislation for the News Bargaining Incentive (NBI), a mechanism designed to compel social media platforms, including Meta, TikTok and Google, to financially compensate Australian news publishers for the journalism that drives traffic and advertising revenue on their platforms.
The draft bill proposes a levy of 2.25% of Australian revenue on platforms that fail to strike commercial deals with eligible news publishers. Those that do reach agreements can reduce that figure to 1.5%. The levy applies to platforms earning $250 million or more from Australian users, with all money collected redistributed back into the Australian news media sector. After public consultation on the draft, the government plans to introduce the bill during the winter sitting period.
This is a developing story with significant implications for the media landscape in Australia. The tech giants are actively lobbying against the legislation. Masthead news publishers have largely backed it, though the response across the broader sector has been more divided, with independent and community publishers raising substantive concerns about whether the scheme, as drafted, will serve them at all.
The ecosystem of news media places journalists at its front and centre. They question, investigate and bring stories to the public, stories that, without their work, might never see the light of day.
An important structural reality, according to the media landscape report by Medianet this year, is that the largest single group of journalists (42%) work within commercial media organisations owned by major media companies, which govern editorial decisions and publishing priorities. Once a story is written and published, the revenue cycle begins. Readers subscribe, advertisers follow audiences, and the money funds the next round of reporting. Simple in theory. Less simple when you factor in how dramatically the medium of news consumption has changed over the past decade.
As Australian Communications Minister Anika Wells put it: "People are increasingly getting their news directly from Facebook, from TikTok, and from Google. And we believe it's only fair that large digital platforms contribute to the hard work of journalism that enriches their feeds and drives their revenue."
When digital platforms became the primary distribution layer for news, the economics fractured. Intermediaries began earning significant advertising revenue from journalism they did not fund, while the journalists producing that content saw their financial situation worsen considerably. The AFR reported that Google and Meta channelled close to $11 billion to overseas affiliates through service charges and reseller arrangements in the past year, while their combined local tax contribution totalled just over $140 million.
The Medianet 2026 Australian Media Landscape Report, which surveyed more than 800 Australian journalists, paints a clear picture of an industry under genuine financial stress- the kind of structural context that makes the NBI both timely and necessary.
The NBI's stated aim of returning between A$200 million and A$250 million annually to Australian journalism would represent a meaningful injection into an industry that has been haemorrhaging revenue for years.
That said, the announcement leaves significant room for scrutiny. The policy framework creates financial flows between platforms and publishers, but what guarantees exist that funds will reach the journalists actually producing the content, rather than being absorbed by corporate intermediaries along the way?
It is a concern with historical backing. As Chris Janz — former chief digital and publishing officer at Nine Entertainment and now CEO of Capital Brief has observed of the original News Media Bargaining Code, the platform money "mostly went to the shareholders of Australia's biggest media companies or was used to pay off their debts” he said to ABC Radio National.
The treatment of independent and freelance journalists is another critical gap. The 2026 Medianet Media Landscape report found that freelancers and casuals are bearing an equal burden of AI-related job losses. Yet the NBI's eligibility criteria focus on established news publishers with revenue above $150,000, a threshold that, combined with the scheme's deal structure, risks channelling funds overwhelmingly to the largest incumbents.
The Local and Independent News Association (LINA), which represents over 170 independent newsrooms across Australia, issued a joint response with the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia that welcomed the legislation in principle but questioned its effectiveness in draft form. As LINA and the CBAA put it – "The proposed News Bargaining Incentive, as currently drafted, does not address the underlying issues in the News Media Bargaining Code on which it is based. Commercially focused eligibility requirements create barriers to participation for small publishers and volunteer-based community media, further entrenching the status quo in a media landscape that is already one of the most concentrated in the world." (Mumbrella, 29 April 2026)
A key structural concern is that under the current draft, a platform could satisfy its entire levy obligation by striking deals with as few as four major media players, leaving the public distribution pool at zero and independent publishers with nothing, while forcing them to compete against newly subsidised incumbents. In response, LINA has called for the incentive to require that at least 25% of all deals be made with small and medium publishers (revenue under $50M), to ensure a genuinely diverse media ecosystem.
Also notably absent from the draft is any substantive engagement with AI. The bill explicitly carves out AI services that solely use large language models to answer questions, even as AI-generated content increasingly competes with human journalism for audience attention. The 2026 Medianet's Media Landscape report found that the greatest perceived threat to public interest journalism has now shifted from disinformation to "changes in how people consume information due to AI". Yet the legislation does not address this dimension.
If implemented fairly and with genuine accountability mechanisms, the NBI is good news for Australian journalism. The questions it leaves open are worth pressing.
The NBI story framing undersells how significant the downstream effects could be for anyone whose work depends on earned media, journalist relationships or the broader media ecosystem.
Better-resourced journalism means a more demanding media environment.
If the NBI succeeds in its aim, Australian newsrooms will be better funded in theory. For journalists, that is good news. For communications professionals pitching to those newsrooms, it raises the bar considerably.
Well-resourced journalists have more time and capacity to investigate, scrutinise PR claims and decline pitches that do not meet a genuine newsworthiness threshold. The 2026 Medianet Landscape report already signals that this dynamic is in motion; for the first time, press releases have overtaken industry contacts as the primary story source for journalists, used by 86% of respondents. But the same report found that 78% of journalists say receiving AI-generated pitches decreases their trust in PR as a source, and 48% say they can almost always tell when a pitch has been written by AI.
Critically, 66% of journalists still rate PR professionals as important to their success, but specifically when those professionals bring genuinely useful stories and credible sources. The best way to build trust with a journalist you have not worked with before, according to 60% of respondents, is to demonstrate that you understand their specific interests and beat.
The message is clear: as newsrooms become better resourced, the premium on authentic, well-researched, human-authored communications will increase. Comms teams relying on volume-based AI-generated outreach are likely to find those approaches increasingly counterproductive.
The News Bargaining Incentive is the most significant structural intervention in Australian media economics since the original News Media Bargaining Code in 2021. For journalists, it offers a potential reversal of years of financial decline, but only if the money finds its way through the corporate layers to the people doing the actual reporting, and only if independent publishers are not left behind by a deal structure that rewards scale over diversity.
For communications professionals, it signals a media environment that will reward genuine relationship-building, human-authored communications and monitoring strategies sophisticated enough to track where journalism is actually happening.
The bill has not yet passed parliament. The winter sitting period is the next key milestone to see if the public consultation process has any effect on how the incentive comes to life.