Tech behemoth Meta has lashed the Albanese government’s plans to impose a new tax on its Australian revenue to fund journalism, describing it as an “indefensible” regime that will make media companies dependent on government handouts.
In a blog post published overnight, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Quest virtual reality products, unleashed its response to the News Bargaining Incentive, a new law attempting to strongarm three of the world’s biggest tech companies – Meta, Google and TikTok – into striking deals funding media outlets.
‘Foreign extortion’
The plan has triggered an angry response from US business lobby groups, which have warned that it falls foul of Australia’s free-trade obligations with the US. The White House described it as “foreign extortion” but, so far, has not stepped in to impose any retaliatory trade measures.
The major Australian media companies, meanwhile, took the rare step of sharing a joint statement in April, warning that without compensation, “journalism becomes unsustainable”. On Wednesday, News Corp Australia chief Michael Miller rejected the notion that the incentive was a tax.
“The government only built this path because Meta refused to sit down at the negotiating table, and again they are flipping the script rather than adhering to Australia’s proposed laws,” he said.
Nine Entertainment chief executive Matt Stanton said it was disingenuous to suggest that following Australian law was blocking investment.
“This initiative would be completely unnecessary if these companies simply adhered to existing Australian law, came to the bargaining table and reached deals for the fair use of our commercial property,” he said.
On Tuesday evening, Albanese backed the importance of the news incentive during a speech at a Parliament House function celebrating 195 years of The Sydney Morning Herald, according to several people who attended the event.
Meta has been a fierce critic of the policy since the beginning, but its rhetoric has escalated as the law comes closer to being introduced. The government wants to legislate the incentive this winter. Meta wrote in its Australian blog that the incentive is a “discriminatory tax built on a false premise”, and said it could remove news from its platforms entirely – as it did in Canada in response to a similar law – and people would use its platforms more.
Its harshest criticism is reserved for the levy being imposed on “consolidated revenue attributed to Australia” – a broad definition that captures its sales of Quest devices and, potentially, Google’s smartphones and other tech products.
“It is broader than digital services taxes, as it is applied on the widest possible revenue base and with no credible connection to news,” Meta wrote.
“The case for extracting revenue from social media services – where publishers voluntarily share news – is not supported by the evidence. Extending that logic to VR headsets and smart glasses is indefensible.”
Meta said it rewarded legacy business models instead of innovation and insulated news publishers from competition. “This is not a plan to save journalism. It is a tax on innovation dressed up as media policy,” it concluded.
“We are vehemently opposed to this legislation. It is discriminatory, economically incoherent, and will not deliver the sustainable news sector that Australian journalists and audiences deserve.”
Google has continued to honour and re-sign its pre-existing commercial deals with Australian media companies, but there are grave fears it would decimate journalist roles if it followed Meta in pulling out.
The policy is playing an active role in the minds of investors. On Tuesday, Macquarie reduced its valuation for Nine from $1.15 to $1.05 a share, ahead of its current price of 92¢, noting the incentive policy could add “an incremental $20 million in annual revenues on high margin”.
Nine owns the Nine Network, streaming platform Stan, out-of-home firm QMS Media and publications including The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Free TV, the group representing Nine, Southern Cross Media (which owns Network Seven) and Network Ten, has argued in its own submission to Treasury that the scheme is too narrow and should be expanded to include Microsoft and Apple.
It has also called for “robust powers” to be granted to the Tax Commissioner to demand that each tech platform report its Australian revenue. Google and Facebook do not report the full revenue they derive from Australians due to complex resale agreements or because they act as “agents” for low-tax jurisdictions like Singapore or Ireland. The two companies transferred more than $11 billion abroad in 2025.
“Free TV is concerned that there is insufficient power granted to the Taxation Commissioner to investigate whether a platform may exclude Australian-generated gross revenues from its calculations of this amount,” the group wrote.
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