Updated ,first published
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor are hammering out deals on charging tech giants for news, cutting the NDIS, and curbing betting promotions, prompting the Coalition to mull a broader bargain on tax and migration.
A last-minute plea from former prime minister John Howard to go further on sports betting advertisements appears unlikely to sway the leaders, who excluded the Greens to do a rare Labor-Coalition deal on a set of thorny issues as One Nation eats into their vote.
Resisting pressure from Labor and Liberal backbenchers and Howard to go further on gambling, Albanese insisted he had got the balance right between acknowledging those who “have a punt on a Saturday” and protecting kids and addicts, pitching his day of deal-making as delivering “outcomes over outrage”.
“We choose a different road: we choose progress over protest,” he told Labor MPs in Canberra, after this masthead reported worry in cabinet over One Nation portraying a full ban on betting ads as a nanny-state solution.
“We choose unity over division … We’re here to make a difference.”
Albanese is expected to yield from his positions by restricting betting inducements and reversing a change to the News Bargaining Incentive that large media outlets said would crimp their revenue. Both were aimed at winning Taylor’s support and satisfying corporate demands, clearing the path for a clutch of legislative wins in the first parliamentary session after the winter break. Powerful media and sporting stakeholders were worried about the Greens’ more strident positions on policies where Albanese was keen to bank quick wins.
Coalition sources involved in the talks with Labor said the party would now think about how it could leverage its in-principle agreement to move quickly on the NDIS. The opposition may demand speedy resolution of a quirk in Labor’s negative gearing laws that hurts widows or seek a commitment to give the Coalition some wins on its upcoming migration overhaul, which One Nation has sought to exploit.
As politicians returned to Canberra on Monday after the winter break, one of Albanese’s first items of businesses was scheduling a meeting with Taylor to salvage his big tech agenda from the brink of defeat and to win support for plans to force US platforms to pay for news and block gambling advertising.
Sources on both sides said that Albanese and Taylor had a detailed discussion on betting ads. The long-running policy debate has pitted gambling harm advocates against big media firms, including this masthead’s owner Nine, and sports.
Albanese and Taylor agreed to work on amendments that would strengthen restrictions on inducements, a week after bombshell allegations that betting firms were holding drug-fuelled events with big gamblers. Labor has initially resisted going further on inducements. Country Racing Victoria chief executive Scott Whiteman said cash-strapped regional racing would be “up the creek” financially if it could not reward punters with free bets and other “generosities”.
Howard made a last-ditch plea for Albanese and Taylor to take on powerful media and sports outfits by cracking down hard on sports betting ads. The former leader rubbished Labor’s proposed opt-out system which relies on people telling a social media platform or broadcaster they do not want to see ads, telling this masthead it was “against human nature to expect people to sit down and opt out”.
Instead, Howard declared it would be “far better” to create a new opt-in system whereby people would be shielded from promotions unless they volunteered to see them. The opt-in model is supported by the Greens and some major party MPs, but the major party cabinets view the idea as too extreme.
“I think it should be the attitude of all the major political parties, both Labor and Coalition, to legislate in the public interest. And if that means disappointing major companies, then disappoint them,” Howard said in an interview.
“It’s a very poor thing that young people grow up thinking that gambling on sport is a normal part of life.”
Taylor told reporters in Canberra: “We’ve seen three years of delay from Labor on dealing with this but … we will work with the government to make sure it is right.”
Albanese and Taylor also held looser discussions on the NDIS, which the Coalition delayed but was always likely to eventually support, and the News Bargaining Incentive. The NDIS changes, which could pass the Senate next week, would shift 160,000 people away from the bulging system and save up to $38 billion over four years. Every month in which the laws were not tightened would cost the budget about $1.5 billion.
A week after the largest news firms pleaded with the prime minister to reverse last-minute changes to the News Bargaining Incentive, Albanese also expressed optimism about settling on a model to push Meta, Google and TikTok to pay for news articles.
The tech giants argue there is no justification for the policy because news outlets benefit from distributing their work on social media.
Albanese has pledged to stand up for the scheme in the face of threats from the Trump administration, which has described the tech taxes as extortion.
The news scheme was at risk of collapse after Nine and News Corp savaged amendments that may have lowered payments to big media outlets and pushed money to smaller ones. The news bargaining incentive is a world-first framework to draw revenue from tech giants to fund journalism.
The key change that infuriated the news organisations would hypothetically reduce any one firm’s portion of the fund from $25 million to less than $17 million.
The change was made by Labor without consultation. It was designed to benefit smaller publishers, but large outlets argued it undervalued the bigger players who hire the most journalists.
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