Cheng Lei: Let’s welcome Shadow Communications Minister Sarah Henderson to the show. Hi there, Sarah. Thank you for your time. You’re very worried about you know ministerial discretion over things like what constitutes harmful content online.
Senator Henderson: Lei, good afternoon. We certainly are, and we’ve also seen now with Senator David Shoebridge’s comments. The Greens have belled the cat. They now want to use these laws to shut down the views of their political opponents. That is why this bill is so dangerous in its current form. The government needs to scrap this bill and go back to the drawing board. The minister continually misleads and, frankly, lies to Australians because many of the serious online harms in this bill are already prohibited under either the criminal law or under the Online Safety Act.
But part of this bill is all about political censorship, giving the minister unfettered discretion to decide categories of harm without any sort of parliamentary oversight. But there’s also dangerously vague definitions in the bill about what constitutes serious harm or harm to children, and they could be interpreted in many ways. And this bill also applies to the news media, any news website, any podcast, which gives the government very wide powers to shut down any sort of speech with which it does not agree. It’s dangerous. It’s political censorship, and it must be stopped.
Cheng Lei: To me, it almost has echoes of China’s internet cleansing programmes. So, to you, to the Coalition, what would be good eSafety system design?
Senator Henderson: Look, we certainly think that much more needs to be done to keep Australians safe online, particularly children. One of the amendments that we put forward in the Senate recently to the Online Safety Act was the importance of parental safety tools. They exist on the operating systems of Apple, Microsoft, and Google but they’re not made available to parents only to corporations or government departments through enterprise agreements. That’s wrong.
Parents should be given greater control over what their children see online and say online to stop the harm getting to the device, any sort of harm right across every sort of platform, and now we see the prime minister is proposing to meet with Apple in the United States to talk about safety tools. Such an act of hypocrisy Lei because the government voted against our amendment to introduce the rights of parents to access parental safety tools.
That’s really, really shocking, and I think, frankly, the Americans would be pretty alarmed by this bill, by the proposal to introduce political censorship, which, of course, is very much frowned upon in the United States. But look, this is a very dangerous piece of legislation. We don’t know where this could stop. If the Greens think that they can control any sort of speech from the Coalition or One Nation, anything is possible, and that’s why it’s got to be shut down.
Cheng Lei: How does that dynamic work? At the same time, Australia is trying to court major tech companies in terms of AI investment in Australia, but we’re also showing them that we are going to get very tough on these platforms. How does that work?
Senator Henderson: Well, we are of the view, and that’s why we introduced the eSafety Commissioner, the Online Safety Act, and of course, they were all world-leading reforms that much more needs to be done to keep Australians safe online. We think much more needs to be done to hold big tech to account. I also put forward, on behalf of the Coalition, an amendment to the Online Safety Act to introduce algorithmic transparency, because that’s happened on X. Elon Musk has made the algorithm for the For You feed on X transparent and has published that online. But we haven’t seen that from Meta, and of course that tells us what’s going on under the hood, what’s being censored, what’s being suppressed, what’s being amplified or elevated, so big tech must do much more.
We have to hold them to account. Yes, of course, they play a very important role in our lives. Our devices are important to most Australians, but we need to know when we pick up that device that we are going to be safe. And of course, big tech has really abrogated its responsibility in many respects. We’ve seen some damning judgments and findings against Meta, for instance, in the United States. And if I can also just mention the scams online, the scams, particularly on Meta, are ripping off Australians are causing enormous harm. They are not dealing, doing nearly enough to stop terrible financial scams, in particular. And this government is sitting on its hands on that sort of harm, which, of course, so many Australians are really suffering from as well.
Cheng Lei: What do you think will come out of the PM’s visit to Apple?
Senator Henderson: Well, I hope the PM will wake up to the fact that parents need safety tools, which are, of course, offered by Apple and also Microsoft and Google on their operating systems, and also through various apps to make sure that either directly or through third-party apps that are available, that children can be kept safe online. This gives parents enormous control over what they see and what they can say online, and that’s very important.
As I say, very regrettable such a gross act of hypocrisy that Labor voted against our amendment for parental safety tools, but I think he’ll have a lot of explaining to do as well Lei, because I think the Americans will be pretty shocked by this particular proposal, which is nothing short of a proposal to politically censor everything that Australians say and see online.
Cheng Lei: You don’t think some internationally will see it as somehow you know protecting the population?
Senator Henderson: Look, I don’t think so because this is a Trojan horse to reintroduce the dis and misinformation laws of a couple of years ago. Yes, we have to do more to keep Australians and children safe online. We have to do more to hold big tech to account, but we cannot mix this up with the right of Australians to engage in lawful speech, lawful political debate, and of course that includes Australian news media sites. Our free speech, Lei, is so important. You know that probably more than anyone else. After what you have endured, free speech, free expression is everything.
Cheng Lei: Thank you so much.
Senator Henderson: You know directly what you’ve gone through. So, we’re going to fight this every step of the way. Thank you.