Media code is a Stalinist show trial

Last week Google Australia’s managing director Melanie Silva told a Senate committee that if the government’s proposed media bargaining code becomes law then Google will turn off its widely used search engine in the country. Yikes!

This is neither an idle threat, nor an unreasonable one. The media bargaining code is hopelessly flawed. It misunderstands the cause of the decline in media revenues, seeks to extract money from unrelated activities of technology companies like Google and Facebook, has requirements that threaten the core business of those companies, and has a bargaining system that could most politely be described as “rigged”. It is the public policy equivalent of Stalinist show trial.