The News Bargaining Incentive (NBI) and News Journalism Payments bills will be introduced to parliament today, with the government finalising amendments to the legislation as late as yesterday.
Under the scheme, platforms including Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok will be required to pay a levy based on their Australian digital advertising revenue if they fail to strike deals with Australian publishers.
AI platforms are not covered by the legislation or the new amendments.
One of the most significant last-minute tweaks will reverse a decision the government made last week, where the maximum share of a platform's levy payment that any single media outlet could receive was reduced to 17% from 25%.
Nine and News Corp pushed back, arguing the change undervalued businesses that employed the most journalists.
And the government reversed this decision, restoring the cap to 25%.
The minimum number of deals required to fully offset the levy has also been increased to eight from six, a change designed to open up more opportunities for smaller and regional publishers.
The base rate for calculating the levy has been decreased from three years of digital advertising revenue to two years, designed to increase the levy and boost the pool of available money for media outlets.
The amendments follow changes made on August 3, when the levy rate was raised from 2.25% to 2.5%.
Country Press Australia president Damian Morgan said the introduction of the legislation represented an important milestone after almost two years of policy development.
"Country Press Australia has been consistent from the beginning: Australia needs a News Bargaining Incentive, it needs to encourage genuine commercial agreements with news publishers, and it needs to work for regional and independent publishers as well as Australia's largest media companies," said Morgan.
"Moving from four agreements to eight substantially increases the opportunity for regional, rural, local and independent publishers to be part of the commercial arrangements the legislation is designed to encourage.
"These are meaningful improvements."
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