The opposite is true in Australia. All the Murdoch papers are hard-paywalled—they usually can’t even be bypassed by tools like 12ft. The slightly-less-right-wing papers from Fairfax use a soft paywall that can be bypassed with Incognito mode.
The rigidly centralist ABC is required by statute to be freely available, and left leaning media like the Guardian and the Conversation use, at most, a modal requesting donations which can be dismissed.