Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The idea of tax offsets and incentives to try to get more journalists employed, particularly journalists with a focus on public interest journalism, was taken off the table. I'm interested in knowing whether it was taken off the table because specifically the organisations that it would have applied to would have been organisations that practise independent journalism. We can look at specific outlets. There is The Guardian, as we have already mentioned, but there is also BuzzFeed and the Huff Post. They've all set up here in Australia. They are new voices in the media landscape. They've been welcome additional contributors to the national debate. What other rationale could there be for excluding those voices—The Guardian, BuzzFeed, Huff Post and so on—from having access to a range of tax offsets, a range of incentives, that would have allowed them, along with other players, to employ more journalists? We know it wasn't cost, because the cost of something like this is minimal. What is your rationale for taking those off the table?