Nine Entertainment Co will receive hundreds of millions of dollars to support its newsrooms over the next five years after formalising deals with Google and Facebook for use of content on their platforms.
Industry sources, who spoke anonymously because they had signed non-disclosure agreements, said the two deals were signed early on Tuesday morning, after months of negotiations and the introduction of landmark new media bargaining laws.
...The deals follow a difficult negotiating period which included a decision by Facebook to pull news from its platform altogether and threats from Google to withdraw search from the market. The negotiations were led by chairman and former federal treasurer Peter Costello, chief digital and publishing officer Chris Janz and director of subscriptions and growth, David Eisman.
While the new laws do not currently apply to Google and Facebook, the threat of being forced to comply with them has been enough to make them sign deals.
Australia has an amazingly robust and dynamic culture. How did that happen? — frank
I've seen some figures in the right say some pretty stupid things about Climate Change. — Manuel
It's convict origins made for a very egalatarian culture, which it still is. — Wayfarer
Liberal-National party, when it got into office, it dismantled that legislation, which was working as intended and would have greatly contributed toward reducing carbon emissions at practically no visible cost to anyone. — Wayfarer
The really poisonous, indeed treacherous, thing that the Conservatives did was politicise climate-change policies for their own advantage, running a scare campaign on the 'great big new tax'. — Wayfarer
After the catastrophic bushfire season in 2019-2020 the public finally accepted the reality of having to deal with climate change. But you still get the sense the conservative side is being dragged kicking and screaming (with some exceptions at State Government levels.) — Wayfarer
Seventy per cent of all housing wealth in Australia is now concentrated in the hands of the over 65s. [Approx 16% of the population - SX]
The rise in house prices in the biggest cities is simply ridiculous. Take the price of the median Melbourne house. It hit $908,000 last month, according to CoreLogic data. To reach that level, it increased by almost $800 each day, every day, of the year to date. Or Sydney. The price of the median Sydney house reached $1.186 million last month. Which represented a daily price rise of $1220 for every day of the year to that point. So if you were aged 21 to 35, and earning the national average income for people in your age group – $58,635 a year – the price of a Sydney house was rising every day by an amount equal to one week’s wages. The message to average Australians is to despair of being able to do what your parents very likely did – buy a home. What a brilliant national achievement. We’ve priced the next generation out of the ability to buy a home. We have only 26 million people inhabiting an entire continent but cannot supply affordable housing in our major cities.
This is the diplomatic treatment befitting of Australia’s true global status as embarrassing, unhelpful coal-guzzling climate pariah; a stupid, irresponsible outlier in a shifting world; an unambitious island nation determined to squander the very real opportunity to prosper in the inevitable renewable energy age. No matter how the Australian Government spins this, how breathlessly their propagandists in the press parrot their position, or how effectively our fossil fuel oligarchs lobby against it, this year’s G7 marked the beginning of the end of the age of coal.
All member nations stated that government support for the industry would cease, and re-affirmed pledges to hit net zero emissions by 2050. Along the way, the UK has set a 78% reduction target by 2035 (from 1990 levels), while the USA is aiming for a 50-52% cut by 2030 (from a different 2005 benchmark). Australia’s current target of a 26%-28% reduction in emissions by 2030 sets us at the back of the developed world’s contribution to this global crisis, and our current trajectory has us reaching net zero emissions by 2167. By then, we’ll hopefully be vaccinated against coronavirus.
According to reports, they can’t stand each other. I think Joyce passes the pub test for ‘despicable’ in a lot of people’s eyes (mine included). — Wayfarer
Australia's government has lashed out after a United Nations report claimed it had not done enough to protect the Great Barrier Reef from climate change.UN body Unesco said the reef should be put on a list of World Heritage Sites that are "in danger" due to the damage it has suffered. Key targets on improving water quality had not been met, it said.
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