The architect of Australia’s original News Media Bargaining Code has welcomed the government’s rebooted plan to make tech giants pay for journalism, saying it closes a critical loophole that allowed Meta to avoid paying by simply removing news from its platform.

Rod Sims, the former ACCC chairman who designed the 2021 code, told this masthead the new policy directly addresses Meta’s threat to withdraw news content - a tactic the company deployed in Canada and briefly in Australia when the original legislation was being debated.

“We didn’t envisage when we brought it in that anybody would be crass enough to take all media off their platform. We just never thought anybody would do that,” Sims said. “But given that Facebook have done that, then what the government’s now responded with is an

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