Will Australia and US set our media policy?

The government's new media plan does not do much to aid the ailing industry, and a law change that might help has stalled.

The government said it was following Australia's lead but the mutual interests of Trump and his tech billionaire allies could block the path.

"Government cannot solve these issues entirely, but can remove barriers that stifle innovation," Minister for Media and Communications Paul Goldsmith said in the discussion document released last week.

Among critics who claimed the five-point plan merely tinkered around the edges was Better Public Media (BPM), which described it as "no more than a band-aid on the media sector's severed arteries."

BPM said the proposals do not mention the future of state-owned TVNZ.

And while obliging streaming platforms like Netflix to put 10 percent of their revenues into local content could see around $50m invested, BPM reckoned that was roughly the same sum as the decline in investment the sector experienced last year.

The discussion paper also didn't say anything about the global tech platforms investing in news, even though there was a law to do that before Parliament.

The discussion paper only lists the Fair Digital News Bargaining (FDNB) Bill under "other initiatives."

The Bill was the result of taking a "wait and see" approach after a former Australian government introduced the [https://www.accc.gov.au/by-industry/digital-platforms-and-services/news-media-bargaining-code/news-media-bargaining-code

News Media Bargaining Code] in 2020.

That law ensured Google and Facebook - designated as digital platforms "who benefit from a significant bargaining power imbalance" - would negotiate payments with Australian news businesses for news carried on their platforms.

The previous Labour government finally introduced the FDNB Bill to Parliament in 2023 but failed to pass it into law before losing the election.

The current coalition government picked up the Bill last year, but in December Paul Goldsmith said it was "on hold" because Australia's government had announced new measures to oblige the likes of Meta and Google to pay for hosting news on their platforms.

Last week Goldsmith said he wanted to "take stock" of what Australia was doing now.

What is Australia doing now?

"This issue already spans two successive Australian governments, and is certainly threatening now a third," said Tim Burrowes, who runs Australian media company Unmade, which organised a forum on the future of media and advertising held in Auckland this week.

"Late last year the Labor government announced a new policy (which) would create a levy on some of the digital platforms - but the platforms would be able to effectively get a discount on this levy based on the arrangements they'd be making with news media players," Burrowes told Mediawatch.

"We are a long way from that being legislated... and we are very likely to be in the final weeks of the Labor government," he said.

Australia was due to have a general election before May.

"We'll have to wait and see whether the Coalition opposition will support it, or whether they'll want to go back to the law that they had previously championed."

"We're treading water at the moment, and I imagine that suits the platforms just fine.

Facebook had stopped their last set of deals. Google, for the most part, seems to have moved to a sort of cycle of one-year renewals. Until there's a little bit more certainty there isn't much incentive for them to be making deals with publishers," said Burrowes, who is also the co-host of a weekly media show on Australia's ABC radio Medialand.

Local measures Trumped anyway?

Last Monday, The Sydney Morning Herald said Australia's plans to challenge US tech giants "have been paused because their ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, is working to stave off trade retaliation".

Media minister Paul Goldsmith's office told the Herald this week: "We will reflect on that decision."

That follows reports earlier this month that Trump's regime would target any foreign countries that single out US-based companies by "targeting American interests with discriminatory taxes."

The interests of US tech platforms and media companies and Trump's regime are now aligned, making it risky for New Zealand or Australia to seek to levy the profits of Netflix, Meta or Disney to money back into the local news media.

"There was reporting in Australia that Labor went out of their way to brief both sides of politics - the Democrats and the Republicans - about what they had in mind prior to this policy announcement about this proposed levy," Burrowes told Mediawatch.

"Presumably that was to try to head off some sort of claim by the platforms later. But certainly, it looks now Meta and X and Elon Musk have the ear of Trump.

"I don't think there's any guarantee that if it were legislated that it wouldn't put Australia in a firing line when it comes to some sort of trade war which the [Australian] government obviously wants to avoid," he said.

While all this is about brand new political alliances and digital-era technology companies, The Australian Financial Review recently reported that the tax law allowing the US government to identify countries working against American interests is 90 years old.

"When it comes to regulating the platforms, so much law is out of date. The same also goes when it comes to taxing these big businesses, particularly when they're in multiple jurisdictions.

"Governments, including Australia's, attempt to create new laws to better prevent platforms from offshoring all of their profits... but there's always a way of finding a loophole," he said.

Billionaires at work

On his ABC show, Medialand Burrowes warned that the US politicians were effectively "seizing control of the means of communication."

"We saw Musk become a participant in the US election. He's already tangled a few times with the Australian authorities, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him interceding in the next Australian election," Burrowes told Mediawatch.

He also expects Australia's own billionaires might start making more overt displays of their power via the media.

Billionaire moguls like Clive Palmer or Gina Rinehart had already done so.

"Gina Rinehart attempted to take control of Fairfax newspapers before they ended up being merged with Nine. She'd also been a shareholder in Network 10, one of the free-to-air TV networks alongside Lachlan Murdoch."

At the time, Nine owned the New Zealand newspapers now owned by Stuff.

"More recently, we saw her take out newspaper ads congratulating Donald Trump. We will see others showing an interest in influencing the media," he said.

Meanwhile, The Australian newspaper recently reported "rumblings over the state of the media industry" here - and hinted at a buyout of the New Zealand Herald.

"Some wealthy Kiwis are said to be plotting to do something about it. People who could emerge as potential candidates to assert greater influence over the business include wealthy Kiwi entrepreneur Nick Mowbray.

"Others say a Canadian billionaire who resides in New Zealand is eager to get involved," said the paper, citing no sources whatsoever.

At least one North American NZME investor is eager for change, said The Australian.

Mowbray was often critical of NZ news media on social media - often with spelling and grammar which would need a tidy-up before it could appear in any paper.

But when NBR and BusinessDesk asked the toy tycoon himself if this was true, Mowbray said no.

According to BusinessDesk, he also described the Herald as "the best and fairest of New Zealand's media."

An unexpected endorsement there for the under-pressure masthead, which - like the rest of them - is striving to survive in 2025.

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