Australia’s leading journalism and media researchers are urging the Federal Government to adjust key elements of the proposed News Bargaining Incentive (NBI), warning the current design risks entrenching media concentration, and takes too narrow a scope by excluding AI platforms.
In joint, complementary submissions to separate consultations by Treasury and the Department of Communications, the University of Canberra’s News & Media Research Centre and RMIT University’s News, Technology, and Society Network say the scheme does not go far enough to strengthen public interest journalism, particularly in regional, hyperlocal, and underserved communities.
The researchers strongly support the intention of the NBI to address the power imbalance between digital platforms and Australian news businesses, but in their submission to Treasury, say the policy needs to be platform agnostic to capture emerging digital intermediaries carrying news – including generative AI systems – and future-proof the NBI.
The researchers also question the justification for the exclusion of platforms for professional networking, large-scale messaging, and information-sharing and discussion, which mean some popular platforms would not be subject to the NBI, regardless of how big they grow. “If platforms such as Reddit and LinkedIn meet the relevant reach and revenue significance thresholds, they should be included within the scope of the NBI. Excluding them solely due to platform classification is inconsistent with real-world news consumption patterns,” the submission says.
When it comes to distributing funds raised from the NBI, the submissions recommend reserving 15% to create 200 journalism traineeships annually, addressing Australia’s falling number of young journalists.
They say the rest of the funds need to be more fairly distributed to protect the diversity of the Australian media, including by removing the $150,000 eligibility revenue threshold, which currently excludes more than half of community broadcasters and over a third of independent local publishers.
Another key recommendation is to introduce stronger incentives for platforms to strike deals with smaller newsrooms providing journalism to under-served communities, preventing the platforms from concentrating their deals among a handful of large publishers.
The researchers recommend raising the minimum number of qualifying commercial deals from four to 10 and providing additional financial incentives for platforms that exceed 10 agreements.
Response to the exposure draft of the News Media Bargaining (Administration) Act 2026
Response to the News Bargaining Incentive Consultation on Revenue Distribution