Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for those questions. As we've consistently made clear—and, indeed, as the legislation provides—designation will be a decision of the Treasurer on the basis of advice given to him by the ACCC. As the Treasurer has previously indicated and as the government has indicated, our thinking is that the services to be designated would be the search product of Google and then the Facebook News Feed; those are comments that the Treasurer has made previously. As the shadow minister rightly notes, there's been an announcement to the market by Seven West Media that it has concluded an agreement with Google, and there have been reports of a number of other deals presently being negotiated, and that's certainly consistent with the government's understanding.

Of course, the policy intention of the code is to encourage commercial negotiation. It is an example of a negotiate-arbitrate model, as the shadow minister would be very familiar with from her previous professional experience. Negotiate-arbitrate is widely used in telecommunications, and there are similar structures in other industries that the ACCC regulates.

So in response to the specific question 'What is the government's intention as to what will be designated?' I make the point that the Treasurer has made previous comments about that—about the scope—but that ultimately it will be a decision for the Treasurer, based upon advice provided to him by the ACCC, and that advice will be given against the backdrop of the overall market conditions, including and of course informed by what has been the extent to which deals have been done and who the parties are to those deals. So those are all factors to be considered. But the government's position in relation to how the designation process will work has been consistent. The framework is clearly set out in the bill, and ultimately it will be a decision of the Treasurer, based upon the advice he receives from the ACCC at the time.

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