• Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Scott Farquhar spoke to US-based technology news website The Verge about tech’s influence on recent media legislation.
• He believes Australia can be a testbed for tech regulation around the world, and that legislation like the news media bargaining code will be a model for other governments.
• “I’d advise people in the US to be up to date with what’s happening in Australia,” he said.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

In an interview published by The Verge on March 16, Scott Farquhar, co-CEO of Atlassian, weighed in on the future of tech regulation in Australia and the world.

Speaking to journalist Nilay Patel and the publication’s predominantly US audience; the interview covered Australia’s news media bargaining code, subsequent legislation introduced to US Congress that would allow media companies to collectively bargain against big tech, and Australia’s position as a laboratory for tech policy.

Australia has been engaged in an ongoing and contentious battle with tech platforms Google and Facebook around paying for news content, with the news media bargaining code passing into law last month.

Australia’s major media publishers struck deals or signed letters of intent with Facebook this week to pay for news, following similar agreements made with Google in February.

Atlassian, Australia’s biggest tech company and one of its largest companies overall, operates globally with the majority of its business operating out of Australia.

Farquhar reiterated the importance of US awareness of Australian developments, as he believes it is a “a test bed for legislation that may come down the line.”

“I’d advise people in the US to be up to date with what’s happening in Australia,” he said.

“People, globally, should be kind of looking to Australia and other countries that are enacting legislation as really a stepping stone to what might happen locally,” he said.

The code, led by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in consultation with major publishers like Nine and News Corp, laid out terms for tech giants like Facebook and Google to pay for news. By reaching an agreement with news publishers, Australia showed a path forward for publishers globally, where media organisations in countries from France to the US have been debating how to square the loss of their advertising dollars to the platforms with the value news stories provide.

Farquhar told The Verge he believes Australia will be a staging ground for tech regulation around the world, due to its small size, location, and how its government is structured.

In his view, Australia’s parliamentary democracy has allowed the country to more easily enact tech regulation.

“What you’ve seen in Australia is a bit of a testbed of legislation on a whole bunch of different areas. Whether that is encryption and privacy, antitrust involving media with big technology.”

When asked whether the Australian government was operating too quickly, Farquhar said he wanted Australia’s tech industry to be more involved in future legislation.

It’s a point that raises swirling questions around technology company’s influence on legislation generally.

In the US, attempts to regulate Silicon Valley have been stymied by the tech industry’s powerful lobbying efforts, which serves to dampen talk of antitrust efforts in recent years.

In Australia’s much smaller — and less powerful — tech sector, neither individual companies nor the tech sector had much sway on the media bargaining code in either direction. Greater influence from Australia’s tech sector would represent a major shift for Australian politics.

“I do love the speed at which we can do things and engage,” he said, “but it has to be in engagement with industry and so, when things are rushed through in a week, there’s clearly not any engagement happening.”

“I think as a technology industry, we could do a better job of helping these governments harmonise their laws, or interpret them and say, “Well, all cloud companies interpret the Australian law this way, so how can we standardise on that,” and that will make it easier for people to consume that,” he added.

“It would make it easier for governments to sort of harmonise their laws.”

You can read the full interview with Scott Farquhar at The Verge.

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