Independent Review – Department of the Treasury
On 8 December 2020, the Treasurer, the Hon Josh Frydenberg MP, and Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher MP, announced a mandatory code of conduct to address bargaining power imbalances between Australian news media businesses and digital platforms, specifically Google and Facebook initially, supplemented by a framework to encourage deals outside the code.
Consistent with the Government’s Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) requirements, the Treasury has certified the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC’s) independent report titled Digital Platforms Inquiry and the accompanying supplementary analysis as meeting the requirements of a RIS.
The Office of Best Practice Regulation (OBPR) does not assess the quality of independent reviews and RIS-like documents used in lieu of a RIS, but does assess whether the options analysed in the independent review are relevant to the regulatory proposal. The OBPR assessed that the options analysed in the independent review were not sufficiently relevant to the regulatory proposal and required additional supplementary analysis. The supplementary analysis addresses the gap in the analysis between the ACCC’s inquiry and the Government’s consideration of options for a mandatory code of conduct.
The Treasury estimates the regulatory burden on businesses to be between $10.5m - $13.0m.
Please note: any accessibility enquiries should be directed to the Treasury.