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Media jobs could be at risk from the federal government’s decision to make last-minute changes to its plan to make tech giants support journalism, Nine has warned, as its chief executive accuses Labor of overseeing a “failure for our democracy”.
Nine chief executive Matt Stanton said the company felt “deeply misled” by the federal government’s adjustments to its proposed laws to force big tech to pay for the use of Australian journalism, as he called on the prime minister to intervene.
If Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not, Stanton said in a statement, “that’s not just a failure of media policy, that’s a failure for our democracy”.
The warning is the first time a major publisher has tied the scheme’s design directly to newsroom cuts. Stanton said the bill made further job losses a real possibility. There are already ongoing cuts across the company’s television and newspaper units. Nine is the owner of this masthead.
Under the scheme, tech giants such as Meta and Google that use Australian media content would face a bill based on 2.5 per cent of their local ad revenue unless they negotiated to pay Australian media companies for using the latter’s material. If they negotiated those deals, the tech companies’ tax liability would be reduced by more than the amount paid to a media company.
The draft legislation caps how much any single deal can reduce a platform’s liability, at 16.67 per cent of the total, down from 25 per cent in the April consultation draft.
Nine argues the cap flattens the market by treating every deal as worth the same maximum credit, so a platform may get no more benefit from a deal with a company that funds a national television newsroom and numerous mastheads than from one with a small outlet whose investment is nowhere near the same.
The government has also lifted the multiplier on deals with small publishers from 170 per cent of the amount of funding to 200 per cent, which Nine says compounds the problem.
“Throughout this process the government said its reform to the Bargaining Code would ensure the tech giants again negotiated commercial deals that reflected the true value that we deliver them,” Stanton said in a statement.
“Instead, it now engineers so-called commercial outcomes that deliberately distort the market.
Smaller publishers have argued that they are essential to the future of the media, especially in regional areas or for diverse communities, and that they deserve greater support. At stake is a share of the up to $250 million a year that the government expects to be raised through commercial deals under the new laws.
The government is also trying to thread a needle between supporting Australia’s media sector, and a Trump White House that has retaliated against other countries’ efforts to tax or regulate American tech giants.
Stanton said that Nine’s journalism had led to royal commissions, corruption inquiries, criminal convictions and laws being changed.
“None of that happens without significant investment and risk, including at times to the safety of our journalists,” he said. “However, the government is putting that local journalism at risk, with the very real possibility of more job losses if the bill goes through in its current form. That’s the opposite of what we all set out to achieve.”