Labor is pushing ahead with plans to make tech giants pay for Australian journalism, forcing them to hand over millions of dollars from their domestic revenue to local media companies or pay a higher amount in financial penalties.

A Treasury discussion paper published on Thursday revealed the government wants to introduce new charges for social media giants and big search engines, which it is calling “incentives”, that will be calculated based on a share of the tech company’s total income in Australia.

The tech companies can avoid paying that fee by striking deals with Australian news companies, where every dollar they invest in media partnerships reduces the penalty amount by $1.50, until it reaches zero. This is designed to make paying for news content the most financially attractive o

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