Pretty silly I guess. They may as well force Australian households to buy a newspaper subscription and cut out the middle man.<p>I can understand the desire by publishers to retain an income stream and maintain their existence.<p>However, the underlying desire is for decent journalism, and if the government wants that, they could just pay journalists. Preferably via lump sums to journalist organisations which would then employ the journalists. Their output would be public domain so that the publishers could make use of it.