Topics: Social media ban, SA election, fuel security, Farrer by-election
Stephen Cenatiempo: From the outset, I have been against this under 16 social media ban. Not because I think under 16’s should be on social media, the less people on social media, the better – and I also think most politicians should be banned from social media too because they’re so bad at it. But 100 days on, it’s pretty clear that this social media ban is not working. One expert has called it an abject failure, because 70% of teens under 16 are still on social media. The rise in artificial intelligence being used to find ways around the ban is going through the roof, and as we predicted at the time, kids are navigating to even more dangerous parts of the internet because they now can’t get on the social media. To talk to us more about this, we’re joined by the Shadow Minister for Communications, Senator Sarah Henderson. Sarah, good morning.
Senator Henderson: Stephen, good morning to you.
Stephen Cenatiempo: This was originally coalition policy. The Dutton coalition sort of dragged the government kicking and kicking and screaming into putting this policy into place or putting the legislation before the parliament. But I got the impression talking to a lot of your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and I exclude you from this because I know that other people spoke to you about it, but there seemed to be a clear lack of understanding about what the real problem was.
Senator Henderson: I think we’ve been very consistent in saying that there must be stronger protections for young Australians online. The safety of young Australians and in fact, all Australians online, is paramount. But as we’ve seen, this government has gone ahead and announced this policy without any plan to make it work. And it is clear that after 100 days of this ban coming into effect, this is just not delivering as the government promised. There were all sorts of implementation problems, communication problems, and really the Prime Minister and also the Communications Minister have also misled Australians I believe. They announced that 4.7 million accounts were deactivated, removed or restricted within days of the ban coming into force, and that claim is now under a cloud. The eSafety Commissioner is investigating the data. So, it really is, what I would say Stephen, a dog’s breakfast. I think that parents and many young teens are really paying the price of that.
Stephen Cenatiempo: That figure, that 4.7, even when it was first announced by Anika Wells, the Communications Minister, there was an admission at the time that we don’t actually know how many of them belong to under 16’s, or how many of them were just accounts that had been dormant, and the platforms were just cleaning up their own backyard, so to speak?
Senator Henderson: What we do know is that from the publicly available data from some of the platforms like Meta and Snapchat, that the 4.7 million claim is inconsistent with what we know. For instance, Snapchat has closed around about 415,000 accounts, Meta about 550,000. So, where has the 4.7 million come from? We had the opportunity to put some appropriate rules in place. Age verification has been a disaster, and I think, as the evidence is now showing, many young teens are finding work arounds. And of course, that means that there is no safety for those young Australians when they perhaps go on to VPNs, which are not safe and are doing all sorts of other things going on to other platforms. So it really, in practice, has been I think a fail, and now the government needs to explain what isn’t working. But as we know, Anika Wells, the Minister, is missing in action. She spent a lot of time flying around the world, you know, engaging in travel rorts, but when it comes to doing her job, I think this is just another example that she’s just not up to it.
Stephen Cenatiempo: But Sarah, the other issue I see here is that at the very beginning we had experts and I know you’ve spoken to the organisation, Tim Levy from Qoria, who’s the foremost expert on child protection in the world, not just in Australia. He identified at the beginning that platforms like Roblox were a real problem, never included in this ban and now all of a sudden it’s, oh gee, Roblox seems to be a bit of a problem, despite the fact that every expert said that it was.
Senator Henderson: That’s right, there’s a lot of controversy about which platforms are in and out, and there are certainly platforms out of the scheme at the moment which I think, on the evidence available, do pose serious risks. As I go back to my principle concern is that the government made very big promises about this social media ban. It hasn’t delivered as promised, and now they’ve got to explain to Australians and particularly to parents, what they are going to do to fix it. Parents deserve to have transparency from the government, not confusion and ducking and weaving. And the problem is, of course, this is a policy that’s been very, very poorly executed. And young Australians are paying the ultimate price when they are going online and of course, parents don’t know whether they are safe or not.
Stephen Cenatiempo: I think one of the simple things that could be done and this is something I’ve been saying for more than a year now, is that parents need to be given the same access to protection at a device level that enterprise customers have. So you know, your government devices, you can’t download TikTok onto them, because there is an ability for enterprise customers to put those kinds of blocks on at a device level, whereas mums and dads don’t have that access.
Senator Henderson: That’s right. Safety technology is available to large businesses, to governments, through enterprise agreements with digital platforms. That is not available to families and that is a real concern, because there is a whole range of technology, as you say, Stephen, that is potentially available that parents and their children cannot access.
Stephen Cenatiempo: It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Sarah, I just want to touch on obviously, the first big test of this one nation surge was over the weekend in South Australia, a fairly significant primary vote, but it didn’t translate to seats. Do you think that tells us anything for the rest of the country?
Senator Henderson: We know and we’ve got to be very humble about this result. Certainly, the South Australian Liberals did try very hard, but we’ve got to be humble, because we’ve seen a huge resurgence for One Nation. But of course, as we’ve seen, a vote for One Nation has in fact translated to more seats for Labor. And so we don’t want to see that replicated at a federal level. This government, of course, is basically driving our nation off a cliff. We’ve got an incredibly weak economy, high energy prices. Now we’ve got the fuel crisis, we’ve got the cost-of-living crisis. We have very dire economic circumstances, and so we are working very hard, led by Angus Taylor and, of course, Matt Canavan, now leading the Nationals to deliver the policies that give Australians the confidence to back us at the next election.
Stephen Cenatiempo: It’s interesting that Matt Canavan has been very vocal about the need to drill for more oil and increase our refining and storage capacity. That’s obviously a long-term fix, but these are things that have been sort of anathema in recent years because of this green push. But do you get the sense that Australians are waking up to the fact that whilst green energy might be a nice idea, it’s not going to put fuel in the car.
Senator Henderson: That’s exactly right. We have seen this government completely mismanage the fuel crisis. I mean, would you believe that just a week ago we were being told we were extremists. We were creating panic in the community. There was nothing to see here. There was no problem with supply. And now we have a full-blown crisis in this country, with no certainty from the government as to how they are going to address our fuel crisis. So, Australians have every reason to have lost all confidence in the government’s ability to manage the very complex supply chain issues and the many other issues our nation is facing.
Stephen Cenatiempo: What do you think this means for the Farrer by-election, particularly given that Farrer is a regional area where the fuel crisis is hitting harder in regional areas than it is anywhere else.
Senator Henderson: What we know is that we need to fight very, very hard, prosecuting very strong policy, including in Farrer. We’ve got a very big job to do, we don’t underestimate how tough it is. We have, of course, got an outstanding local candidate in Raissa Butkowski, and she is someone very deeply embedded in her community. But we know that we’ve got to fight every single day to prosecute the issues that matter to all Australians. And of course, that’s restoring our living standards, protecting our way of life and getting this country back on track.
Stephen Cenatiempo: It’s going to be a tougher job than we might think. Sarah, good to talk to you. We’ll catch up with you in a couple of weeks.
Senator Henderson: Great to talk to you. Thanks Stephen.