Topics: Gambling reform, social media ban.
Melissa Clarke: Sarah Henderson is the Shadow Minister for Communications and Digital Safety. She joins me now in our Canberra Parliament House studio. Welcome back to Radio National Breakfast.
Senator Henderson: Mel, great to join you.
Melissa Clarke: Now, I want to start with the gambling bill. Now the government introduced its bill to crack down on gambling advertising, and that’s been referred to an inquiry. Can you take me through specifically what the Coalition’s concerns are when it comes to this bill?
Senator Henderson: Well, we’ve got a number of concerns. We think this bill is undercooked. Of course, we’ve seen three years by Labor of delay, deflection, and deception in relation to gambling reform. I think trust in the government is at an all-time low, particularly after the Budget, and we want to subject this to a proper Senate inquiry. It’s a very complicated bill, it’s got many different elements. We need to make sure we get the balance right, but the work of the Senate in investigating this bill is crucial. I will make the point that it won’t delay the bill because we are due to report on the 17th of August in the next sitting fortnight, so of course that then allows the bill to be considered in the Senate, but the work of the Parliament is critically important in getting this right.
Melissa Clarke: Specifically, which areas of the bill would you like to see changed to get the balance right, as you put it?
Senator Henderson: Mel, I’m not going to prejudge or undermine the work of the Senate. We’ve got a lot of work to do to interrogate the bill. I am concerned, and have a number of concerns that it’s not strong enough.
Melissa Clarke: In which areas?
Senator Henderson: Well, I mean, for instance, in the exposure draft that was released, we were horrified to find that the current prohibition on gambling ads during live sport had been removed. Now there’s question marks about sort of letting some of these big boys off the hook in relation to what’s allowed online. We need to interrogate that because it’s very complex. But for the Prime Minister to mislead Australians and say we’re introducing legislation to ban gambling ads during live sport, when that is a current prohibition under the law, just shows how desperate this Prime Minister is.
Melissa Clarke: So, I’m not clear on what it is you might want to change. I mean, I know the bill has only been introduced to parliament now and you want the inquiry, but the Prime Minister announced the broad details back in April. There has been the exposure draft. Do you not have a position on things like whether or not opt-out provisions should be opt-in provisions? Do you not have a view settled on whether or not the three ads that are allowed during certain broadcast windows are enough? Is that something the Coalition still hasn’t settled yet?
Senator Henderson: So, Mel, the bill was only introduced into Parliament yesterday. It’s very different in some respects to the exposure draft. I am not going to undermine or prejudge the work of the Senate in investigating this bill, and of course all Australians, and particularly those impacted by the bill, have the opportunity to make submissions to our bill inquiry, so we will go through the process very carefully.
The devil is in detail and so I won’t prejudge where we might land on this bill, other than to say we don’t think it’s good enough. We do have concerns, and the Coalition is very serious about combating the terrible harm caused to so many Australian families by gambling addiction.
Melissa Clarke: So, some of the concerns raised by your colleague Simon Kennedy last night. He was speaking to 730 saying that he wants an opt-out system for gambling ads on streaming services. He says he wants that to be made an opt-in, that that would make a big difference but that’s not official Coalition policy?
Senator Henderson: No, we’re working through all the details internally. I’ve been engaging very closely with my colleagues, including Simon, in relation to the concerns they have about what’s currently before Parliament. That, as I say, we won’t seek to undermine or prejudge the important work of the Senate in scrutinising this bill.
Melissa Clarke: Now, when it comes to social media again, the Coalition worked with the Greens to make sure there was an inquiry into this process. What questions do you want answered there?
Senator Henderson: Well, we’re very concerned that the online safety of Australian children is being compromised because the laws that are currently in place are not good enough.
Melissa Clarke: And is that what this bill tries to address to make them stronger?
Senator Henderson: The bill does try to make them stronger but we are not convinced that they are strong enough. These amendments to the Online Safety Act were rushed through very quickly. Of course, the eSafety Commissioner belled the cat a number of weeks ago in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald when she said she didn’t have the appropriate powers. I then put questions on notice to the government, demanding all of the answers as to how this bill was currently deficient, what further powers were being considered and now, of course, these amendments have come into the parliament. But this is a social media ban which is failing.
This is all the government has done in four years, half-baked law. A bill, which is poorly designed, which was rushed, which is badly implemented, and which is not working. Now that this bill is before the Parliament, we are not going to stand by and watch this Minister, Anika Wells’ incompetence continue to compromise the online safety of Australian children.
We will interrogate this bill properly, and frankly, I think the amendments before the Parliament need to be tougher. That is my determination. But we also need to make sure that, as a parliament, we’re doing everything to keep children safe online because a social media ban won’t stop a life-threatening message being sent to a child. So there’s a whole lot of other things that we need to do. Safety tools embedded in the operating systems of phones, the dreadful algorithms which are fueling addiction.
Melissa Clarke: Can we come to that just before we move on from what the government is proposing here. Though we spoke to Anika Wells yesterday, she said that look, this bill is very short, it’s only a couple of pages, it doesn’t take very long to see, and there’s no need for an inquiry to have been pushed out beyond the next sitting fortnights in August, which this one has. So, what’s your response to her suggestion that this isn’t a complicated bill, that it could be passed quickly, and that delaying it beyond the next sitting just gives the big tech companies more time to marshal their legal arguments?
Senator Henderson: Well, this Minister is incompetent because she’s already got the social media ban badly wrong. She’s now rushing through amendments that I don’t think are tough enough. They’re not reining in the big tech giants. The damage and the harm being caused to Australian children by social media and the insidious psychological manipulation that happens online targeted to children is unacceptable, and we have a responsibility, Mel, to do everything possible.
Melissa Clarke: So tougher finds and greater investigative powers be enough to get your support, or would you not pass this bill unless it included much more significant things like the digital duty of care and changes to algorithms and the like?
Senator Henderson: Again, this is why the Senate inquiry process is so important. We’ve called for submissions, they’re now open. We are going to investigate what else can be done, but my preliminary view is that these amendments are not good enough. More needs to be done to rein in the big tech platforms, and I will have more to say about that in due course.
Melissa Clarke: I’m still not clear. Is that more to be done on the elements of fines and investigative powers or is it more to be done in those other elements that you were talking about?
Senator Henderson: More to be done on reining in the insidious nature of these big tech platforms, and you know, there is now technology in place to block live streaming of horrendous child sexual abuse. There’s a whole lot of things that can be done and that’s why I’ve called on Google, Microsoft, and Apple to give their safety tools to parents, which are currently available to corporations and large government departments through enterprise agreements, so that parents have the choice and control over what their children see online, not just on social media platforms, but every part of their connection with their device online.
Melissa Clarke: Sarah Henderson, thanks very much for joining us on Radio National Breakfast.
Senator Henderson: Thanks, Mel. Great to chat.