Independent publisher welcomes the Prime Minister’s copyright commitment and the new Office of AI, and calls for AI companies training on Australian journalism to be brought inside the scope of the News Bargaining Incentive
Sydney, Australia – July 15, 2026 – Man of Many, an Australian independent digital publisher, welcomes the Prime Minister’s commitment today that Australian creators must retain ownership and control of their work, as the government establishes a new Office of AI within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Co-Founder Scott Purcell said the announcement is a strong signal of intent, and Man of Many is keen to see it followed through in the separate piece of legislation that will actually decide how it works in practice.
“The Prime Minister’s position today is the right one, and it’s good to see the government holding firm on it,” Purcell said. “Australian writers, journalists and artists should retain ownership and control of their work, full stop. The Office of AI and today’s national standards are one part of getting there. The other part is the News Bargaining Incentive, which has its own timeline through Treasury and Parliament, and that’s where this principle is tested in practice.
“As it stands, the levy is aimed at search and social platforms above a revenue threshold. We’d like to see AI companies training on Australian journalism brought inside that same framework, based on what they train on, not just on how large their Australian revenue is. A newer AI company can be well below that threshold today and still be training on the same Australian work as a platform that is captured. The principle should apply to the conduct, not just to companies of a certain size.
“This isn’t a new problem that needs a new solution. Media monitoring companies have paid licence fees for decades to scrape news content and resell it in a different form. The Copyright Agency has been running collective licensing for Australian content for over 50 years. The infrastructure to license AI training on Australian journalism already exists. It just needs to be applied.
“We’d also make the same point about AI that we’ve made about media funding generally: whatever mechanism ends up compensating Australian publishers, it should be tied to verified use of their work, not paid out as a lump sum to whoever has the scale to negotiate the biggest deal. That’s true of a distribution scheme, and it’s equally true of an AI licensing arrangement. Get the mechanism right, and the size of the publisher stops being the interesting question.
“We made that case in our submissions to Treasury and the Department of Infrastructure earlier this year: close the current carve-out for AI training use, and don’t introduce a text-and-data-mining copyright exception. Both are consistent with what the Prime Minister said today. We’d just like to see them land as settled law rather than a stated intention.”
Purcell said Man of Many is encouraged by the direction of travel across the industry and government alike, pointing to creative industry groups’ joint call at Parliament House on 2 July for the government to hold firm on copyright and bring AI companies to the licensing table, and looks forward to working with the Office of AI as the national AI standards are developed over the next 18 months.
“There’s real alignment right now between government, publishers and the wider creative sector on this,” Purcell said. “That’s a good foundation. We just want to make sure the detail matches the ambition.”
Ends.
For additional information, please contact:
Scott Purcell – Co-Founder, Man of Many – scott@manofmany.com (+61 403 496 680)
About Man of Many
Man of Many is Australia’s largest men’s lifestyle site and the country’s first 100 per cent carbon-neutral digital publisher. Established in 2012, Man of Many’s mission is to inform, engage, and empower Australians with comprehensive, accurate, and timely content across lifestyle, culture, technology, and significant public issues. With over 2 million monthly readers and over 900,000 social followers, Man of Many provides premium yet approachable content that resonates on a global scale. Proudly independent and award-winning, Man of Many is dedicated to their purpose of empowering people to make positive investments in themselves and their communities.
