AUSTRALIA will force Google and Facebook to pay for news content, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said today.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission will release guidelines in July on how to force the tech giants to pay for journalistic content siphoned from news media, he said.

Australian media have been hard hit by the Covid-19 crisis and competition from free distribution of news on digital platforms, with Australian Associated Press announcing last month that it would close. Journalists’ union the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance called it a “gross abandonment of responsibility by its shareholders, Australia’s major media outlets.”