Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I move, That the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to consider the bill.

I’m so pleased to be presenting the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill to the House for its first reading. This bill will support the New Zealand news media industry by incentivising fair commercial deals between news media companies and the big online digital platforms. The bill promotes voluntary commercial agreements and creates a bargaining code to ensure commercial discussions are fair. When deals cannot be reached voluntarily, the bill provides a bargaining and arbitration process that acts as a backstop to support our local New Zealand companies.

The intent of the bill is to address the bargaining power imbalance between multinational global digital platforms and local New Zealand media outlets. This is about fairness. We want to see fair negotiations and fair deals for New Zealand media companies, in line within what we are seeing globally. This important legislation will encourage deals and ensure smaller news media entities are not left out. This Government supports a free and independent news media ecosystem and wants to support New Zealand media companies to be self-sustaining in a digital future.

The bill will provide a pathway for media companies to be viable in the 21st century. It will provide a critical revenue stream for media companies and ensure the sector will not be reliant on Government funding in the future. Fair deals will create enduring partnerships and ensure the ongoing sustainability of local regional newspapers and radio stations right across Aotearoa. The threats to block news in Canada proves the extraordinary market power that these platforms wield and underline why we need regulation to ensure that deals can happen here for our local content creators. A free and independent news media is critical to our democracy here in Aotearoa. We need a vibrant media system that contains many voices and can provide local news to all New Zealanders.

The media landscape has changed. Without this legislation, the local newspaper and radio station is under threat. People are accessing their news online. This shift has undermined the viability of traditional business models for news media. Without the ability to monetise their content online, New Zealand news publishers will continue to see declining revenues and an inability to retain journalists, and will produce less news content. While some commercial arrangements have been reached, overall progress has been slow. Small local publishers and news outlets are at risk of missing out on deals completely. It’s become clear that the market isn’t working and there’s a role for Government to support fair negotiations with global platforms. These issues have been acknowledged by the Commerce Commission as well as competition authorities overseas, such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in Australia.

The New Zealand news industry is struggling. In the last decade, newspaper advertising revenue has halved while costs have continued to go up. Increasing costs to produce news content combined with reduced incomes has contributed to the halving of the number of journalists in New Zealand. The current model is unsustainable and has a real impact on journalism and local community news. This will have real impacts for our local communities that rely on getting news to get their information, something that all politicians should be worried about.

The digital platforms generate significant revenues in this country. They make a lot of money from New Zealand. The digital advertising market in this country is estimated to be around a billion dollars a year. However, most of this money goes overseas, and the people whose hard work is used to generate that wealth are not fairly compensated. News publishers are trying to negotiate for the fair value of their work but are largely unsuccessful because they’re too small and struggle to get deals. We have seen this with our very own News Publishers Association (NPA). While Google made some deals, Meta has refused to engage with the NPA despite the Commerce Commission authorising collective bargaining.

Something needs to be done to create a fairer digital news market. This bill is a way to support fairness and ensure that all news organisations, no matter their size, are receiving fair compensation for their work. It will create a bargaining code that will guide good faith negotiations to help our smaller regional and rural news outlets to enter into fair deals. The bill is designed to be flexible and futureproof to ensure it can adapt to the changing media environment—while Google and Meta are the two biggest players today, that might not always be the case.

If a digital platform can show that it makes a fair contribution to the New Zealand news media industry, it will receive an exemption in the bargaining process. The Broadcasting Standards Authority will oversee the framework and they’ll determine which companies are eligible under the legislation, and this will be an independent process, obviously, at arm’s length from the Government.

The bill has provisions for Māori media, supports smaller news publishers, and requires digital platforms to strike deals with Māori news publishers. The bill also allows media companies to come together to collectively bargain without authorisation from the Commerce Commission. This will benefit all news publishers to combine resources and improve their bargaining position. The Google News Showcase deals that are currently in place show that commercial partnership between news media entities and digital platforms are possible, and both parties can thrive. The bill is already having an impact on the digital news market place.

New Zealand’s not the only country taking action to support its news industry. Both Australia and Canada passed legislation to encourage commercial arrangements between news publishers and digital platforms, which has been welcomed by the news media industries. At the same time, the US, the UK, and other countries are considering similar legislation. Despite strong opposition from digital platforms, our likeminded international partners are sticking up for their news industries and New Zealand needs to do the same. It’s critical that we present a global united front in support of free press.

News content is a valuable commodity. The news keeps people informed and up to date with important issues, as we all know. It provides vital knowledge and connections for local communities. Having trusted sources of information in the digital age is becoming increasingly important. Highquality news media supports democracy and provides information to New Zealanders on the issues that matter to them. I’m pleased to be able to present the bill to the House because it directly supports a free and independent news media, and will bring some justice and equity right across the New Zealand market place—certainly, that’s the hope—and ensure that all New Zealand media companies can continue to survive in a digital future without the need to be reliant on Government funding. I therefore commend the bill to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, and will support its passage in 2024.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Well, I start by saying the National Party will oppose this bill, the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. It is really interesting that one of the final acts of this Government is, once again, to mess with the fourth estate, our digital economy, and our media landscape. This is, effectively, a licensing and registering of news media, a very first for New Zealand. The Minister for Broadcasting and Media actually claims—and he has some criticism from the stakeholders—that this bill will see payments to the media sector that will replace the ill-fated Public Interest Journalism Fund—which was $55 million, we all know, but actually was about $150 million all up with bailouts—that only saw the further erosion of trust in our New Zealand public media landscape. National will have to seriously look into—I will have a serious job to ensure that independence and trust can actually return to our media sector regulators and funders when we are in Government after 14 October.

It is important to note that National has always said that if it can be clearly shown that digital platforms are breaching intellectual property and copyright and making money from news content from New Zealand’s media, they should pay for it. I have yet to be presented with the evidence that this is in fact happening. If tech companies like Meta, Alphabet Inc., Google, or Twitter / X are utilising and monetising news from the New Zealand media sector, they should pay for it; I support that. There is cause for claim before the courts and regulators for restitution. However, if people like us are freely posting and sharing news links on Facebook and driving traffic to the news sites, why should Facebook have to actually pay for that? That is a completely different story. If a person searches for an article using Google search—that’s how the internet is supposed to work—and it takes them to the news website, that is a service and benefit that the media sector actually benefits from that search.

Digital platforms do not actually produce content. In the case of Facebook, the Minister actually talked about—they rely on content generated by users, including you and I, Madam Speaker; we share it on our Facebook feeds. When the news is shared on Facebook, people actually click on the links, it actually takes them to the news website away from Facebook. Facebook doesn’t actually make money from that but the Minister thinks that they should actually pay for that. I encourage submitters—if this bill actually gets to select committee—to actually look at how the copyright is in fact breached, how it’s actually taking place. I encourage them to seek legal advice, as we already have well-established, tried and true processes in this country for civil justice. We do not need yet another regulatory regime without cause.

If it is, in fact, about advertising, which a lot of people actually will remember—in the old days, traditional newspapers relied on classified advertising. I remember, as a journalist, sub-editors used to actually walk around with a mock-up of the newspaper. It was, you know, about yay big—about an A5 size—and it would be filled with squares of advertising on the paper, and whatever column inches were left after the advertising was placed was what news actually went on. So they relied on this classified advertising. But guess what! Those things actually disappeared when platforms like TradeMe and seek.co.nz actually replaced that classified advertising, because it was so much easier for people to search for jobs and search for classified ads on the digital platform than on the newspaper. And so to now characterise the Googles and the Facebooks as the bad guys that are taking revenue away from media is, in fact, a decade too late and also the wrong platforms to actually be targeting the payments for.

Media also utilise these platforms to grow the audience. Bluntly, a mandatory bargaining code is effectively another tax by this Labour Government—in its dying days—for businesses that innovate in the digital sector and are already supporting the media landscape.

The bill undermines the role of the Commerce Commission, which has a careful and independent role in regulating businesses and media. It hasn’t even been a year since the Commerce Commission made its ruling authorising the collective bargaining that the Minister talked about for media with digital platforms. It should at least be able to review, you know, it should actually be reviewed by the Commerce Commission—it hasn’t even been a year—through its independent position, before the Government decides that they’re going to bring in a new regime to force upon this country, and particularly before an election, on the media, to negotiate.

Well, guess what! The commission already investigated the very issue of media bargaining, on the Minister’s request, giving the sector the ability to collectively bargain. It is, in fact, really interesting to actually note that 95 percent of New Zealand’s news media have already got deals with Google. And Facebook—not as many, obviously, as the Minister had actually said. And, you know, for Google News showcases where New Zealand news actually appears—and that is actually quite a good thing that they’ve done that; they’ve done that without being forced to do so. I guess this bill is supposedly for Facebook to come to the party.

I think it is really ridiculous when platforms like Google have supported an estimated $16.5 billion worth of economic benefit in 2022 alone for New Zealand businesses to actually work on the platforms and on the digital economy. We should actually support innovation. The Minister’s own officials have actually said that whether to carry news content on these platforms is a commercial decision for each digital platform, and they suggest that maybe other platforms might replace them. With this bill, who would bother? Because the threat of humongous fines is massive; I think on tier one it is 10 percent of their total revenue. That is a humongous amount of money, and what this bill would potentially do is make the platforms decide not to carry our news. And who would miss out as a result of that? Even the Ministry for Culture and Heritage actually commissioned a report, which says that regulating to require payment to news media companies from the digital platforms would not necessarily lead to an increase in public interest journalism.

So why is the Minister bringing this on? I guess it is an ideological thing. He wants to support his mates in the media, but what he has to understand is that he needs to look to Canada as an example. When C-18 passed in Canada, what happened was that Facebook and Google also agreed that that’s what they will do. Facebook has now decided to block Canadian news from that platform and Google will follow, as I said. And the result is that it is the indigenous media and smaller media companies who are in fact suffering. A lot of them actually relied on Facebook users to share their news stories to reach more people, which effectively brought them to their website. One of them actually talked about how they enjoyed more than 300,000 viewers or readers of their news and after Facebook actually blocked Canadian news, it has actually now been reduced to 60,000 and they believe that they’re going to be absolutely devastated and potentially have to close as a result.

The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill should be fair, but this isn’t fair. This is actually skewed towards news media and it certainly does not promote bargaining. The word “bargaining” implies the right to walk away and not participate. But if you don’t participate you will be made to pay. This is actually not a fair move. This is not a fair bargaining code. This is literally, as someone actually called it, a shakedown. We do not support this build.

What the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill does is it will empower better journalism through enabling resourcing—better resourcing of journalism and that is because at the moment the playing field is really David and Goliath. There does need to be a backstop of required bargaining, because we know that in David and Goliath situations, it’s very easy for the Goliath to walk away and not be involved—which is exactly what these big digital companies would probably prefer to do.

When I was a journalist for many, many years, it was a different environment. There wasn’t digital news, and there wasn’t the pressure of immediacy and competition with getting the word out as quickly. There weren’t the news cycles; there weren’t the deadline pressures.

I would never shoot the messenger—I think the journalists mainly do a good job, but they are under a considerable amount of pressure. What happens when the sector is under-resourced, as it currently is, is that the why gets dropped. So we see the what, where, how, and who, but the why part of what has led to particular policies or situations gets left behind, and that makes our democracy really vulnerable in terms of the oversight job that the media does as the fourth estate. I’m thinking about these wicked problems that we face, such as climate change, misinformation, inequality—we see a lot of focus on politics and personalities or on events, but very little on the why. In fact, Jonathan Milne, in Newsroom this morning, was saying that good journalism requires an investigation of the why and the policies.

So that’s what this bill is attempting to do. It’s requiring the parties who have the weight in the digital space to come in and negotiate in good faith so that the sector can get its fair dues, so that journalists can do their job well and do them better, and I hope that going forward we do see a bigger focus on the why.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s probably my last opportunity to speak in this Parliament, so I’d just like to wish everyone all the best—there’s some event coming up, apparently, in a couple of months. I do actually mean that—I think everyone who’s not a politician doesn’t realise what we all go through in this period. So I just want everyone to enjoy the process, and all the best. Hopefully, we’ll see most of you back.

This bill, the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, is certainly a solution looking for a problem. I really don’t understand the need for it at all. We’re in incredible times. I think if we look back at other major changes, like going from horse and cart to the combustion engine, while it happened rapidly, it was nothing like the pace we’re seeing in the change in the digital world, particularly when it comes to the media and the way they interact with that. One of our major newspapers, Stuff, was sold for a dollar. In days gone by—it wouldn’t be that many decades ago; maybe only a decade or two ago—those sorts of banners would have gone for billions or at least hundreds of millions. But now it’s a dollar. That was a real opportunity to innovate, and I don’t think we’ve really seen that.

People consumer their news in different ways, but when you click on a link from social media and go through to that website, the host news organisation’s website, you see digital advertising. In fact, I advertise digitally through Stuff, and the New Zealand Herald, so that is how they’re benefiting from it. So why would you want to pay to put our stories on your website, on Facebook or whatever else it is? That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me, and I listened very carefully to the first three speeches, and I didn’t get an answer except from my colleague here, which basically confirms my view that I’m very sceptical about the need for this bill.

I know that this is a very difficult and uncertain time for journalists because of the fast pace of the change. But the reality is that people do not want to consume their news through a piece of hard paper. They’re mostly going through the digital portal to read their news, and that does impact on their advertising. But the classified advertising, like the TradeMes of this world, have eaten their lunch basically, but it’s much more user-friendly for the public. So why would we ever want to change that? We can’t do that. We can’t walk that back; the horse has bolted.

The media now needs to find a way to actually adjust their business models to make it in a digital world. I think that they haven’t done that successfully yet. I don’t know if someone will find the magic way to do it, but I think there’s actually an opportunity in the digital world for a very small publisher to get a lot of coverage. A lot of people who are well read write opinion pieces and they get a lot of hits through social media and I think that’s a real opportunity. People want that sort of that thing now. We’re no longer the media of old, and I think that with the Public Interest Journalism Fund and all the lockdowns and the misinformation that came from supposedly trusted sources, people now don’t trust. They simply don’t trust because their trust was abused through the lockdowns and all the misinformation that came out.

So now some people, wrongly, I think, have gone down a rabbit hole as a result of that, but the Government made that problem far worse with the Public Interest Journalism Fund and tying the values of those media organisations to the Government’s values. I think that was a really sad day for New Zealand, and this is part of the problem or the fallout from that that the Minister is trying to address with this bill. I think he’s doing it with good intentions—I don’t doubt that—but it’s the wrong solution and we oppose it.

I don’t know how the media platforms actually benefit from this in the end, because what we’ve seen in Canada is that it’s actually had the reverse effect. Those platforms that were sharing the news are now not, so they are getting less exposure, not more. So what people will do is just go further to selected media organisations rather than getting a broader perspective on what is happening, and that’s a really sad thing. It’s really sad if you’re only going to read and consume your news in an echo chamber—that is really sad. But that’s effectively what we got with the Public Interest Journalism Fund. We didn’t have that broad sweep of views that inform the public, and I think that was very sad. I was angry, actually, when that came out. I thought it was really a bad move. All of the things that we talked about at the time, things that would happen as a result of that, have happened. So we’re still in the stages where those media outlets are trying to react and adapt to this new world that we live in. And it is kind of like the survival of the fittest, so I can really understand why those media outlets and the people working in them would feel so uncertain at this time.

But Governments picking winners, as my colleague says, is always a bad way to go. I don’t really have any more to add, but we do have major reservations about this. No doubt the Government’s got the numbers to pass it. It may not even be picked up next time around. I don’t think we would if we’re fortunate on 14 October. So with that, all the best.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I really hope that this actually does go through, even if there is a change of Government. I’m standing on this side saying that I really hope there isn’t, because this is really important.

I used to work in a newsroom, and I believe in the quality of journalists and their integrity and what they bring to the table. I also know that they work really, really hard to put that content together. What this is is nothing to fear. This is a fair process that needs to happen, because for a long time those big organisations have been cutting and pasting really good quality journalism to their own platforms. What this does is it gives an opportunity for journalistic integrity and quality journalism to be recognised and fairly compensated in that process. And to date, it really hasn’t been.

So I thank the Minister for bringing the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill forward. I know that there are news platforms out there that have been seeking compensation like this for a while, or, if not just direct compensation, actually just the ability to be able to get around the table and bargain with some of these Goliaths, as my colleague Ingrid Leary talked about before.

It’s really important that we do this because journalism is getting harder and harder and the purpose of the bill—let me read it, because I think it’s really important to remember why we’re doing this: “The purpose of this Act is to support sustainable production of New Zealand news content by ensuring that operators of digital platforms make a fair contribution to the cost of producing news content that is made available by their digital platform.” That’s it. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re bringing this discussion to the table.

On this side of the House, in the Labour Government, we’ve always talked about fair pay; a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. That’s exactly what this bill is doing. I commend it.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party. It’s my last speech in this current term, and I’d like to thank all my colleagues in the House and Minister Webb, my colleagues in the ACT Party, and the members of the New Zealand public for the right and privilege to have served. I hope everyone has a great election.

As New Zealand’s only member of Parliament who is an anarcho-capitalist—believes in free minds and free markets—it’s not going to surprise you that I’ve convinced our party to oppose this bill. Even though the Labour Government may feel ideologically this is suitable, I’m going to give you some reasons why it’s not. I admire their tenacity, but we did kill the Radio New Zealand - TVNZ merger and now the objective is to kill this.

This bill will die when the current Government is not re-elected in October, but the standard practice of consultation with the industry has not really occurred in this space. It’s the State again intervening in the market place to force one industry to subsidise another declining industry. Money this Government pumped into media via New Zealand On Air over the last three years since 2020 has led to suspicious motives and led to the public of New Zealand losing trust in this institution and also the institution of the fourth estate.

The $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) was welcomed by media outlets, which competed for the cash to fund jobs in journalism projects, while it lasted, but the strings came attached with the PIJF, and that was one of the Government’s downfalls. This bill is no better, as the strings remain, but only indirectly. The Government needs to stop thinking it has the right to gerrymander news media markets through its various conditions for funding.

The Cabinet paper for this bill says that “continued funding of public interest journalism ‘increases risks around the perceived independence … and public trust in the media’ ”. Clearly, the hope is that payments from the big tech titans will fill the void as the PIJF fund spending is done and dusted. With the Minister, I always wonder what’s in it for the Government, and I looked on at the TVNZ and RNZ merger and its motives. This is a way of finding money for the media to replace millions of dollars of public interest journalism funding.

Now, Google has done deals with over 50 local large- and small-scale news media outlets. The sums involved are confidential commercial secrets, as they should be. This arbitration process does not add any value to the industry or to how you manage that mechanism, and that does contravene, I think, some of the Commerce Commission rules and regulations.

The ACT Party’s view is that there’s absolutely no need for this bill at all. It’s actually a waste of time. This bill did receive a sort of low-key reveal of the law to make big tech pay for news. There was no launch at the “pulpit of truth”. There was no big media hype about it. In fact, Simon Shepherd asked Willie Jackson a year ago, “Are you putting the hard word on them to secure deals to pay for content?”

The potential for politicised, extraordinary tactics by the Government and Minister is understandably high under this bill. People have mentioned Canada. They did introduce a similar online news Act in June 2023, and both Meta and Google have agreed to not host Canadian news content in return, which has had significant impacts on consumers, including during emergencies. The objective is to require platforms which host digital media to pay for media producers for their content. This is to provide sustainable income for New Zealand media companies without reliance on Government funding. It means forcing one industry for another.

The Government’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill requires that news media be subject to professional standards, conditions that threaten to curtail the role of the fourth estate. This aspect of the legislation will limit media diversity by risking the viability of independent news sources who would prefer not to have their editorial discretion constrained. Creating a funding scheme only for regulated news media entities makes the media market increasingly uncompetitive for independent producers and limits media diversity. The bill has a stated intention of supporting a free and independent news media industry, yet is adding a further requirement that to be eligible for funding in the scheme, news entities need to be under the issue of the PIJF and simple, direct funding. This is no better as a bill with the strings that are attached. The editorial decision-making is anything but guaranteed with this type of approach, and the explanatory note of the bill notes it seeks to reduce risk to public media by removing direct Government funding of media.

This bill has no place in the media landscape. The industry is already addressing this issue. They’re already doing their own deals to make sure that this is regulated. Self-regulation in a free market is the best way forward for this industry. Thank you.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Let me start by wishing you the best as you step out of this place into brighter sunsets and sunnier islands. And also supporting the words with colleagues who will be stepping on to the campaign trail—I look forward to jostling elbows with yous out there on the campaign trail. This will be, I guess, my last time speaking in the House this parliamentary term, so this will be the last time that colleagues Shanan Halbert and Tama Potaka will hear my dulcet tones reverberate around this hall. So I rise in support of this Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill on behalf of the Greens—supporting all the arguments in support of this bill as well, but also, I think it’s really important for us to recognise the importance of the fourth estate and what that means for our national democracy, but also, importantly, for our regional democracy and our rural democracy as well.

As I was listening to folks, I was reflecting on how few rural newspapers there are between the Manawatū heading up towards Hamilton, and it’s probably like that around the country as well as more and more stuff moves online. The importance of actually having those voices report the news from those communities’ perspectives—it’s really, really important, because when we strengthen that regional democracy and that rural democracy, that’s good for all of us. That’s good for the functioning of society, and I just wanted to reflect on the real importance of that.

As politicians, as MPs, we get put under the microscope by the fourth estate; by the media—and probably a few of us around here have felt that burn when they’ve done that as well. But it is important to have that critique. It is important for functioning democracy to have that sort of criticism. And I note that nobody’s up in the press gallery at the moment, because before I came down I noticed that the journalists were out there grilling both the National Party and the Labour Party on their tax policy bun fight out on the tiles just before as well—which is their job, and good on them, but I would like to remind them that the best tax policy is on greens.org.nz. We need to be making sure that the very wealthy pay their fair share so we can have all those good things like free dental care and so on and so forth. So journalists, if you’re out there, take a look at our website; we’ve also got a tax calculator as well. But anyway, I’m deviating from the bill, so I’ll get back to it.

This bill aims to enable fair bargaining between New Zealand news media and social media platforms for news content. This is achieved by providing good-faith bargaining code and a framework for revenue sharing on news content which is provided by news media but distributed and published on social media. It’s important to note—unlike Facebook and YouTube and all of these other platforms where they just share our content, those things are powered by an algorithm, and the algorithm actually prioritises those top 100 things that you will see on your Facebook feed. And so, I guess, at least with the media—with the fourth estate—they’re actually human beings. Like, I’m fairly certain most of them are human beings and that’s different from the algorithm. And I heard comments from that other side that actually if you have too much public-funded journalism, you end up in an echo chamber—actually, that’s what the algorithm does. It actually prioritises those top a hundred items or whatever so that that you will engage in it. It’s the engagement that actually gives those companies the money; its engagement that actually makes those algorithms work. They’re not actually people, it’s an algorithm.

So that’s what our local democracy and those voices that we need to report are actually competing against, and it’s really important for us to recognise how damaging that has been for our democracy. We only have to look to what happened in the United States—and I reflect that within the OECD, New Zealand has one of the lowest public broadcasting funding per capita—and the US is worse. And we saw what happened there with the with the movements onto the Capitol Hill and how they’re still grappling with that, because they actually haven’t been able to deal with the real fundamental issues of democracy and what the impact of these social media giants and their actual responsibilities are to our wider democracy here within in New Zealand. So I support the bill because this gives some shape to that; it provides us with an answer. The algorithm isn’t walking around on the streets of Taihape, or walking around on the streets of Fielding, or walking around on the streets of Levin, or Ashburton and so on and so forth—we need people to actually do that.

And here’s the thing with the journalists as well: they’re always held up to criticism, which is fair enough, actually. I was just noting how the host on Breakfast has been hauled in front of the media for criticising members of this House, and I don’t know whether that criticism was justified or not—but there is an accountability there that journalists have that some conspiracy crank with a camera does not have when they publish their stuff on Facebook or Google or wherever. So there is a massive, massive discrepancy, and it’s important to recognise the strength of that journalistic integrity and importance of that.

So just to touch on some of the components of this bill. The code and bargaining system will be administered and monitored by the Broadcasting Standards Authority, which will become the independent regulator of the scheme and code. The regulator will develop the code of conduct to support the bargaining process under the legislation, and this will create obligations on eligible news media organisations and eligible digital platforms subject to the framework. The bill defines eligible news media organisations through adherence to professional standards and New Zealand content and audience. Eligible digital platforms are defined as those which present or facilitate access to New Zealand news content which have a bargaining power imbalance in their favour with New Zealand news media. The bill has a mechanism for eligible news media companies to trigger formal bargaining with eligible digital platforms—followed by mediation and then arbitration if parties do not reach an agreement with specified time frames. There are pre-described duties imposed on parties bargaining to negotiate in good faith and comply with obligations in any code of conduct developed by the regulator, and there are a couple of actual additional features to the regulator as well, Madam Speaker, or Mr Speaker—we’ve had a change in the Chair.

I wanted to make a final reflection on when this type of legislation was passed in Australia. People were wondering, “Well, what’s going to happen here—are the social media companies going to bail?”, and they did try to bail, but then they quickly came back to the party when they found that they were actually losing revenue. So what I think this points to, and the reason why we support it, is that it’s a trajectory of a conversation that we need to be having in terms of the power imbalance of social media companies—because these guys are massive: this is the Goliath of the Goliath versus little David here. And the importance of actually understanding that within the wider context and the impact on our local democracy, on our regional democracy, and our national democracy as well—and what that means on a global scale. So I support the bill.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a call on the first reading of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. As has been discussed in the House earlier, declining news media revenues will have a detrimental impact on New Zealand’s democracy and the ability to keep New Zealanders informed of local issues.

The media landscape has changed and without the ability to monetise their content online, New Zealand news publishers will continue to see declining revenues and an inability to retain journalists. This will lead to news content that does not go through the usual fact-checking process. I tend to look at these issues through a security lens and my concern is that without this bill, people will move to online news platforms that don’t have the traditional checks and balances to verify news content. Our recently released National Security Strategy actually highlights the challenges that we face because of the changing media landscape.

We all agree that a free and independent news media is critical to our democracy in Aotearoa, and we need a vibrant media system that contains many voices that can provide local news to all New Zealanders. In a world where we are seeing many actors at play that seek to divide us, it’s more important than ever to make sure that we support our future financial security for news media organisations—which will allow them to concentrate on producing content that can counter mis- and disinformation online.

So this is an important bill. It’s a timely bill for the media landscape that we’re facing, and I absolutely commend it to the house.

He puru taitama e, he pūru taitama hoki, he pūru taitama, he pūru tukituki, he pūru taitama e. Ka haere a Minita Hakihana e ki te taha ake i a Meta ki te whiri pūtea, ki te whiri take, o te whakawhiu ki wāhi kē.

[A bull of a man, a real bull of a man, a bull of a man, a rampaging bull, a bull of a man. Minister Jackson goes alongside Meta to negotiate finances, to negotiate matters, of throwing it somewhere else.]

It gives me great pleasure to rise and talk to the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill that has recently been introduced—in fact, this morning—and what I want to say is that, in the words of The Buggles: video killed the radio star, but digital won’t kill the journalism star. Digital will not kill the journalism star. I am very mindful, though, of the algorithm, because my Facebook page has not been oily enough lately. So I refer all members of this House to like a few more of my Facebook posts. Now, another register, another tax, enforcement mechanisms, and bargaining—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We’re pushing it just a little bit, Mr Potaka. A bit of respect for the House and talk to the bill.

TAMA POTAKA: Yep—another register; I don’t know if you managed to see that, Mr Speaker. Another register, which, effectively, drives bargaining processes between the digital platforms and others is something we don’t need. My colleague Melissa Lee spoke to the Commerce Commission’s role and how that actually can be a more genuine and real way to deal with some of the bargaining risks that have been, in my view, overplayed by the Minister introducing the bill, the Hon Willie Jackson, and some of my colleagues in the House.

Now, I wanted to refer to some of our exquisite and exemplary Māori journalism over time, because these examples will show you how people have morphed, how people have evolved, and we don’t have to rely on more Government intervention into this space. I wanted to start with that programme Koha—Derek Fox and others—and Waka Huia, with Whai Ngata and others, who were exemplary and excellent Māori journalists in the early 1980s. Over time, those things moved and Māori journalism moved, and then we ended up with Te Karere and some people with quite—how would I describe it?—quite explicit haircuts, like Hirini Henare and Martin Rakuraku, but also others like Tini Molyneux, who has re-emerged in the journalism space after 45 years and has changed and evolved and doesn’t need to rely on Government intervention in order for her to get her stories out.

There are other people as well that were on those Māori news rounds—like Bailey Mackey, another great legend of Māori journalism and Māori production, who moved over time and did not need a Government intervention in order to get his stories, in order to get his journalism, in order to get his productions, in order to get his programmes out and about. He did not need the Government to put their hand up and say, “Actually, we’ve got to control this space.” He’s utilised the digital space that he’s operating in. He’s moved from journalism, and he’s morphed into something, but, ultimately, his kaupapa—getting out Māori stories of consequence and Māori stories that make us happy and Māori stories that make us feel like we’re part of this grand old democracy called Aotearoa New Zealand—he’s actually moved with the times. And people who haven’t moved with the times have looked and done other things.

Another person, another great example, is Mihingarangi Forbes. What a great example of someone who came from Te Karere—or she came from Feilding, actually. Lucky we mentioned that! Friendly Feilding. From Feilding, she went into Te Karere, and now she’s one of New Zealand’s foremost producers, presenters, directors. Another great example is actually young Julian Wilcox, last seen playing for the third XV of Te Aute College in 1993, who has moved from being on Radio Kahungunu, 1992-93 vintage, into shows with Tere Harrison and others in 1997-98, directed by Tuku Morgan, another Māori journalist of notoriety, and is now presenting to The Hui—40 years of active participation in the journalism space. He did not need a bargaining process to tell him “This is how the international digital platforms must interact with you.” So, no, we think this is overbearing. We think it’s a slippery slope. The idea of forcing a bargaining precious from Waatea marae is not something that we would support. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to be able to take a call on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. What an absolutely exciting bill.

Mr Speaker, if you would indulge me: when I was born or when I first had memory, we had a black and white TV. Then we moved on to the colour TV, then there was the plasma and the flat screen. And now in my household, I don’t have a TV; I don’t even have a landline phone number. So as technology progresses—and probably the only time I ever listen to the radio is through apps streamed on my phone—as Parliament, we need to help media progress with the technology and with the ages. This is exactly what this bill is doing.

Platforms make money through advertisements which pay for the clicks they get on to their different apps or different social media platforms. The way that people come and the time that we spend—and some of us in this House today have been scrolling our phones because we have to have interesting content that keeps us on these platforms. That content—a lot of that might be our weird and wonderful TikTok, or whatever, videos that members of this House have generated, but a large part of it is the news and, probably, a lot of it generated by this House as well.

So for the platforms to pay our media the right amount in terms of the content they create and the traction that they draw on to these platforms so that we as users, as well, stay on that platform, I think is getting the fair deal for New Zealand to support journalism in this country, to support our democracy, to make sure the right information gets out there, and to support New Zealanders to make the right choice. That’s why I commend this bill to the House and look forward, in our select committee, to be listening to submissions.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I rise to give my final contribution in this 53rd Parliament in the House. Perhaps people may not know this, but I come from old-school journalism, where I happen to own and publish a magazine that is 11 years old called The Profit, which writes stories—well, my husband, Damon Harvey, writes the stories—for promoting business. In the old-school way, this magazine is paid for through advertising and is given away to readers who can pick it up in Hawke’s Bay. Now, some of those stories end up on digital platforms, and, as a small-business owner, currently, there is no way to earn any income from those stories and the hard work that goes into them and the hard work of the businesses that feature in them.

I think this is one of the things I find perplexing when I hear from the National Party that, as a promoter or champion of small business, they can’t see the benefit in actually considering that this bill can actually enable business. It happens time and time again in this House, where it’s actually the Labour Party that supports and helps grow small business. And when we talk about local issues that are driven out of local regions, out of local news media, out of regional newspapers, this bill, the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, will help to support them, and that’s why I’m commending it to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Very good to rise here. We’re in urgency—it’s just ticked over midday on the final day of the 53rd Parliament, and it’s an honour to be able to rise and give my last speech in the 53rd Parliament. Speaking on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill—the first reading—sneaking it in here right before we close up for the year and head into the election, I just want to wish everyone all the very best going into this election season.

I heard the Minister’s speech earlier in this reading and he noted that it’s looking to maximise the benefits for local media. I think there is some fairly good intention in there and it is genuine, however I don’t think it is going to achieve the outcomes that the Minister for Broadcasting and Media desires. There’s a few issues in that, you know—we already have rules in place that prevent digital platforms breaching copyright and making money from news content. Where they are doing that, they will be found to have not been doing what they should be and they will be forced to pay for that. However, this is a different situation in which we’re doing here—I’m getting told by the Speaker to go a little bit louder.

We have a situation here where tech companies, if they are utilising and monetising, then you would be expected to pay for that, but the question is whether you would expect them to pay for that when people are freely sharing news stories on their social platform. We would argue that that isn’t the role of Government; it shouldn’t be for Government to come in there. That is the place for commercial negotiations to take place. This bill effectively nullifies any negotiations that have been made and imposes a mandatory bargaining code and, effectively, another tax on businesses. So it isn’t something that we would support.

There has been a big move, and speakers on this bill have already discussed how there has been an evolution in the way people consume their media. And there has—I mean, long gone are the days of the big broadsheet; I think there’s about one left, but people don’t tend to consume it like that. I used to read the paper every day, the physical version of the paper; I simply don’t purchase it any more. I consume it either online or I’m directed to it via social media.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: You can’t read it!

SAM UFFINDELL: I didn’t hear that from the honourable member over there.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: It was funny.

SAM UFFINDELL: I’m sure it was very funny. I will have to read the Hansard record—[Interruption] I won’t repeat that one. No, no.

But I would read it, and I know a lot of people do consume their news through stuff that is posted on social media that will be redirected through to a news media site. To say that the digital provider, Facebook or Meta in this instance, should have to pay for that because someone’s freely posted, I think is going a bit too far and is something that commercial entities could discuss themselves. We have seen where such instances have been imposed—and we note the case of Spain and I believe Canada was the other one. Ultimately, those big providers such as Meta have simply switched off that service. They are not willing to get into the situation where they may be fined or face penalties and they’re not willing to take on the administrative burden of what such a situation would impose on them. As a result, people are worse off.

I hear that there was quite a bit of talk around looking after the smaller media outlets, and I’m sure everyone here, especially those from regional electorates, will have those; we certainly do in Tauranga. I know that they will in Hawke’s Bay where the previous speaker, Anna Lorck, was just discussing—they will have their local news media outlet there. A lot of that traffic that’s driven to it is going to be through these digital platforms, people going on there and then linking through from there. It was also mentioned by someone else how you can be a relatively small media provider but you can have quite a significant reach, and a lot of that is done through promoting or having your content promoted through social media. I think we’re somewhat short-sighted in expecting that that will all continue and companies like Meta will just happily go about paying the tax. As I’ve stated, what we’ve seen overseas is that that doesn’t really happen.

We’ve seen here—I think the Minister expects this to raise, I believe it was, $30 million to $60 million. We would question whether that will actually occur. We would probably say that that is a little bit misleading, and what is likely to happen is that that won’t be raised at all. They will simply opt out, as they have done in other countries.

We believe that there’s no need for the Government to be interfering here. We’ve made that perfectly clear. We think this is simply more overreach. We don’t believe the Minister has had a great run looking after or attempting to move the New Zealand media landscape. We can point to the mega media merger that failed. There have been concerns raised about media independence, and we’ve seen millions spent through the Public Interest Journalism Fund and $20 million - plus spent on the failed merger. So while we do note—and I did say it at the start of this—that we think he has good intentions in raising this, I think it is somewhat short-sighted and I don’t think it will achieve what it is that he wants to achieve out of this. We note that this will be the first and only reading of this bill in this term of Parliament, and the next Parliament will have an opportunity to consider where it goes from there. I will leave it there and state that my position and the position of the National Party is that we oppose this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take the final call on the first reading of this bill, the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, and what will probably be the final legislation that we pass in this House in this term of Parliament. Can I just put my thanks on record for this term of Parliament for all of those who make this place tick for us as MPs: the security staff, the messengers, the Clerk’s staff, the wonderful people who bring us glasses of water and make sure we’re fed—all of those people. Can I just place my thank you to you all.

It is a pleasure to take a call on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. I’ve recently just seen an exact example of why this bill is needed in my own electorate. One of our high-profile and very experienced journalists, Tracy Neal—who has previously worked for the Nelson Mail, for Radio New Zealand as a regional reporter, and now works for New Zealand Media and Entertainment and in a public interest journalism space—recently had a story that gets shared across multiple platforms. So it’s often shared on the New Zealand Herald and in our local community newspaper, the Nelson Weekly.

She put up a post on Instagram recently where the exact story—all of the images, all of the writing—had been completely ripped off and put on a Canadian news outlet with a different journalist’s name. There wasn’t even a single change to any of the headlines or any of the text inside the story. For our fantastic journalists in this country who get up every day to tell the stories of New Zealanders here in New Zealand and across the world, when this type of thing happens, it’s utterly infuriating. It’s plagiarism. It’s undermining her good work.

What this bill does is give media outlets the ability to actually tackle these kinds of issues. I note that whenever we raise words like “collective bargaining”, the National Party has an immediate response to that and their immediate response is to oppose. But what we know is that when we provide mechanisms for organisations from within the same industry to work together to get fairer deals—fairer outcomes for that industry—actually, that allows them to do just that.

So this is an excellent bill. I look forward to it progressing through the House in the next term of Parliament under a Labour Government, and I commend it to the House.

The question is, That the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill be considered by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today. Can I thank all those involved in the legislative calendar this year to get to this stage. You know who you are and you all know that we couldn’t be here without the help of you all, so thank you very much.

The House adjourned at 12.24 p.m. (Thursday)