Australia’s richest man Andrew Forrest has announced that it will help 18 small Australian news publishers broker content publishing deals with Google and Facebook to pay for their content.

In a statement on Monday, Mr Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation disclosed that it was working to apply with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the country’s competition regulator, to allow the publishers to bargain without flouting competition laws.

An initiative of the foundation, Frontier Technology, said the 18 publishers would include small online publications that attract multicultural audiences and focus on issues at a local or regional level.

Disclosing that it will assist the small publishers to broker the deal, Frontier Technology’s director of policy Emma McDonald argued that small Australian publishers into public interest journalism should be given equal opportunity to negotiate their content use like large publishers.

“Small Australian publishers who produce public-interest journalism for their communities should be given the same opportunity as large publishers to negotiate for use of their content for the public benefit,” Ms McDonald said in a statement.

In March, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Facebook were mandated to negotiate with Australian media outlets for content that drives traffic and advertising to their websites.

This came as publishers, who have been losing possible advertising revenue to online aggregators, continued to count their loss to the big technology companies using their content in search results or other features without any form of payment.

However, both companies have since struck licensing deals with most of Australia’s mainstream media firms but sidelined many small firms.

The ACCC in October allowed a body representing 261 radio stations to negotiate a content deal.

Mr Forrest is the chairman and the largest shareholder of iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group.

According to the Australian Financial Review, he has a net worth of around A$27.2 billion ($19.7 billion).