Law Council of Australia

Business Law Section

News bargaining incentive

Submission Date: 22 December 2025

Ensuring the regime is flexible and fit-for-purpose

Subject of “social media” and “search services”

The proposed news bargaining incentive framework currently contemplates the introduction of legislation to determine which digital platform entities are within scope of the incentive regime, including relevant definitions of what “social media” and “search” services are.

The Competition and Consumer Committee of the Business Law Section of the Law Council of Australia considers that this method of identifying digital platforms that are within scope of the incentive is unnecessarily rigid and does not provide sufficient flexibility to capture future market developments.

As acknowledged in the Consultation Paper, digital markets are fast-moving and the interaction of news media with platforms will change over time as markets change. It is important that the proposed framework is flexible in its scope and operation to ensure that it remains fit for purpose in fast-moving and dynamic digital platform markets.

This is particularly important in circumstances where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing how people consume news, and how news organisations produce news content and personalise it for individual consumers. For example, although AI chatbots are not yet a major source of news, there may be a growing acceptance of news mainly produced by AI with some human oversight.1 In addition, the use of AI chatbots is an emerging source of news, with 6% of Australians using generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity as a source of news.2

To this end, the Media and Communications Committee recommends including an automatic sunset after, say, 3 years, to enable the Government of the day to reassess the regime’s appropriateness for the changing digital news ecosystem. As an alternative, the Competition and Consumer Committee notes that a mandatory review of the regime could be provided for in the primary legislation.

1 University of Canberra, Digital News Report: Australia 2025, available at <https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2025-06/apo-nid330740_0.pdf>.
2 University of Canberra, Digital News Report: Australia 2025, available at <https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2025-06/apo-nid330740_0.pdf>. See also see United States of America et al v Google LLC - Case 1:20-cv-03010-APM, in which Metha J of the District Court found that AI is disrupting digital search services markets such that remedies need to be carefully considered.

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Last Updated on 03/03/2026

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