Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): 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 300000 viewers or readers of their news and after Facebook actually blocked Canadian news it has actually now been reduced to 60000 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."