The “confusion” between two National MPs on a select committee and their Cabinet colleague has left the party – and the government – once again stuck on what to do to protect journalism and the media industry.
Parliament's Committee on Economic Development, Science and Innovation told the House of Representatives on Tuesday that a bill should be introduced to force global technology platforms such as Facebook and Google to negotiate payments with media companies for the use of their content.
The committee, chaired by Act MP Parmjeet Parmar, gave few arguments for its decision other than that Act would have its opposition registered, Labor its support and the Greens their support if further protections were added in the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.
The bill was introduced by former Labor Secretary Willie Jackson and was desperately sought by most media companies, including Stuff owner Sinead Boucher, who personally warned the select committee of the urgent need to take action to prevent companies and editors from going bankrupt.
Media companies claim the major global platforms are using their content unfairly and siphoning many hundreds of millions in digital advertising revenue away from the New Zealand companies.
The major platforms had opposed the bill, with Facebook indicating it could stop serving news in New Zealand altogether if such a measure were passed.
But after the committee report on the bill was made public, the new Media and Communications Minister, Paul Goldsmith, claimed the government was still consulting on it and that it could still be revived.
He revealed that he had asked the committee to defer its report to Parliament, but that approach had been rejected.
And tellingly, he blamed “confusion” on his own side – first attributing it to “government MPs” and then under questioning by journalists who refined it to “national MPs”.
There were only two National MPs on the eight-member committee, vice-chair Vanessa Weenink and Dan Bidois.
It appears that they were unaware that they should follow Goldsmith's directions rather than decide the bill based on what they had heard and discussed at the select committee table.
And the pair were clearly unable to convince Parmar, a former national MP, to delay recommending to the House of Representatives not to proceed with the bill.
Goldsmith tried to portray the committee's rejection as just one step in a process that could yet lead to National, and thus the coalition government, adopting some version of the measure.
He said that as a relatively new minister, having replaced Melissa Lee in April (following her own failure to come up with anything adequate in terms of policy to help or protect newsrooms at risk), he needed time to help the industry consult.
A New Zealand first MP and undersecretary for media affairs, Jenny Marcroft, has already met with a number of companies on behalf of the government – and Goldsmith said the pair discussed progress but he also wanted to gauge progress.
Now it appears Goldsmith will have to go back to the drawing board, with the coalition's only (live) option for intervention being stymied.
The government had previously refused to express support for the bill, but had explained its reluctance to endorse it by the fact that the select committee was still deliberating.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lee, when they held the portfolio, had said questioning journalists and the public would have to wait and see what the committee concluded.
In March, Luxon said: “The technology platform Bill [is] come forward. We'll look at the entries that come from that. We'll process all that carefully and think about whether there's an opportunity for us to do something in that space. But there are pros and cons to that.”
Lee, when in opposition, had attacked the bill as 'a new tax', and National had opposed it. But when she became a minister, she said she would wait for the response from the select committee overseeing it before deciding whether to proceed.
Luxon fired her in April for failing to strategize the media sector crisis, which has seen both free-to-air broadcasters Newshub and TVNZ announce the layoffs of large numbers of journalists. Luxon explained its removal due to “an additional level of complexity” in the portfolio.
When Goldsmith took the role, he told it RNZ's Morning Report: “Part of the solution is to try to level the playing field as much as possible between what you might describe as traditional providers and the streamers,” adding: “You have some real challenges with the enormous power that the major streaming companies have, and the impact that has on revenue.”
On April 26 he told the story TVNZ he would 'listen and move relatively quickly'.
A month later, as Act helped cut off all aid for a bill that seemed to be the only leverage National's Prime Minister and the new minister were looking for, Goldsmith again told reporters on Tuesday that the situation was “urgent” but said that as a new minister he needed more time.
Act's rejection of the bill in the committee's report was blunt, but perhaps did not rule out compromise with National in further coalition wrangling, noting that it opposed the bill in its “current form”.
There was only one law MP on the committee: Parmar, the chairman.
The party said: “The law does not support the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. We are concerned about the potential unintended consequences of this legislation, and that the risks may outweigh the benefits.”
The committee led by Parmar had included a version of the bill with amendments to include not only payment negotiations for the use of articles, but also for the scrapping of new media companies' content by platforms' AI systems. The committee has also tabled amendments covering compensation and legal action that go beyond the decisions of an intermediary Broadcasting Standards Authority.
The background note to the report states: “If the House decides that the bill should proceed, we encourage it to consider the amendments we have examined.”
Labor and the Greens included notes in the report supporting the need for action to protect public interest journalism. There was no comment from National's pair of MPs or from New Zealand's sole First MP Tanya Unkovich.
Labor said that at a time of “very real crisis for New Zealand's news media” the committee's failure to support the bill was “short-sighted” and that the government's inaction threatened media plurality.
Should Act oppose any version of the bill, and National commit to introducing the bargaining regime in a modified form, National would need Labor or the Greens to get the measure passed.
The coalition does have an alternative. It could leverage a separate piece of legislation already in the works, the Digital Services Tax Bill, which would impose a tax on the gross receipts of large multinational entities with highly digitized business models that earn revenue from New Zealand.
A report on the media sector crisis by think tank Koi Tū last month urged the government to amend the Digital Services Tax Bill to include a capped levy on digital platforms to compensate media for content use , and to create a fair way of distributing the money raised. The Koi Tū Report estimated that such a levy could raise $35 million annually for journalism.