Stephen Cenatiempo: Joining us as she does on a fortnightly basis is the newly appointed Shadow Minister for Communications, Senator Sarah Henderson. Sarah, congratulations and welcome.
Senator Henderson: Stephen, a very good morning to you. Great to join you.
Stephen Cenatiempo: Worst kept secret in Australian politics that you would be the Shadow Communications Minister. I know this is a bit of a passion project for you. How are you settling in so far?
Senator Henderson: I did the job a number of years ago when Peter Dutton was first the opposition leader and I’m absolutely delighted to be back in the portfolio, fighting the good fight on a number of very important issues. Things like regional communications, safeguarding the ABC, making sure the ABC is performing at its very best. And the online safety of all Australians – I’m actually the Shadow Communications and Digital Safety Minister – so we consider the online safety of Australians very important. But of course, we also have to safeguard free speech at all costs and we do have some pretty big concerns about that as well.
Stephen Cenatiempo: I want to get to that in a moment but I just want to follow on my comment about these 115,000 Australians that are stranded. We’ve got a government that, despite all the denials, is clearly doing everything it can to bring these so-called ISIS brides back into the country. But seems to be sitting on its hands when it comes to evacuating those innocent Australians who have just been caught up in the middle of something.
Senator Henderson: Stephen, we have heard reports that some people and there are, as you say, 115,000 Australians who are stranded in various countries across the Middle East. Some have been waiting up to 24 hours to access basic consulate services, they are the reports coming out right now. That is not good enough, so we are hoping and trusting that the government is pulling out all stops to ensure that people are getting the support they need and that plans are being put in place to bring people home, particularly those in urgent or crisis situations. Australians need to know that their government is there by their side in times of crisis. We obviously have war breaking out in the Middle East, it is a time of enormous crisis right across the world frankly, and our government needs to do everything possible to support Australians caught up in this conflict.
Stephen Cenatiempo: Question time yesterday was obviously dominated by these ISIS bride’s situation and I hate calling them that, but it seems to be the terminology these days. Are we any closer to understanding what involvement the government has had in repatriating these people.
Senator Henderson: We do know Stephen and to be really frank, the government has been lying about its involvement. We found out last year that Tony Burke had a secret meeting with Save the Children, where he effectively said, look you can go in and repatriate these people through the back door. Now the government is saying these are self-managed returns. Well, we don’t accept that. The government has been assisting these ISIS brides to obtain passports. There’s only one temporary exclusion order which has been issued. And the government has a responsibility, first and foremost, to keep Australians safe. These are women who travel to a terrorist region to support the most heinous terrorist organisation, ISIS, a death cult. And so, as I say, this government has been ducking and weaving. It has not been telling the truth and that is simply not good enough and that is why we will introduce legislation to make it a criminal offence to facilitate the re-entry of anyone linked to terrorist hotspots or terrorist organisations or who have committed terror-related offences, back into the country.
Stephen Cenatiempo: I want to, before we get on to areas particularly related to your portfolio, yesterday in the Senate, we saw some extraordinary exchanges. Penny Wong leading the charge to have Pauline Hanson censured over comments that she didn’t even make in the Senate, we saw the exchange between Senators Hanson and Lydia Thorpe. I mean, is it any wonder that the latest Amplify report shows that confidence in government has been eroded in the last 12 months?
Senator Henderson: There were some very unedifying scenes, there is no doubt about it. And look, we’ve made it clear that every Australian, regardless of race or religion, belongs here providing they accept our values, providing they support our democracy and so they’re the people that we are concerned about. We certainly did not accept the government’s proposal to censure Pauline Hanson. We were, in fact, prepared to support an amendment condemning the comments that she made but a formal censure, Stephen, is one of the most serious rebukes the Senate can issue and it should be very rare and reserved for matters of parliamentary or ministerial responsibility and not used as a routine political device. And this is what the government was doing and we thought that that was really inappropriate.
Stephen Cenatiempo: One of the things that you are obviously going to have to deal with in your portfolio is the office of the eSafety Commissioner. Now, there was a ruling earlier this year that the eSafety Commissioner had improperly issued a takedown notice to X or Twitter, as I still call it, regarding a post about gender ideology. There has been a proposal for a complete overhaul. This thing started off with all good intentions under the Morrison government to basically protect kids online but it’s now become a law unto itself.
Senator Henderson: Certainly Stephen, we have called for a full review by the government of mandatory takedown notices after the eSafety Commissioner found that she was operating outside her powers. So in effect, she was issuing notices that she claimed were informal, but they were in fact notices which breached the Online Safety Act, and that is what the full federal court found. And this concerned a young woman, a single mum who lives in Western Sydney, who published a video and comments on Twitter or X, raising concerns about a gender club at a Melbourne primary school. And she was very concerned that a teacher at the school was indoctrinating children, young children, about radical gender ideology.
So this young woman, Celine Baumgarten, was raising very legitimate concerns exercising her free speech but the eSafety Commissioner took a different view, asked Twitter to take down that particular post. She appealed to the Administrative Review Tribunal and then it ended up in the Full Federal Court and Celine won. So it’s been a very significant shutdown for the eSafety Commissioner, and we need to know that there’s not widespread misuse of these notices by the eSafety Commissioner. Adult cyber abuse is a significant and serious issue but if a post does not reach the requisite threshold, then what the eSafety commission did was effectively stifle free speech and we know free speech is one of our most important and fundamental rights. So we do have big concerns that things have gone too far and that’s why we have asked the government to conduct a full review.
Stephen Cenatiempo: I can only imagine what it costs us, the taxpayer, to go through that whole process. Now the reports this morning that the review into the 2025 election is going to be effectively covered up. I mean, this is just madness. If the Coalition wants to find its way back to government, you’ve got to be transparent about what went wrong.
Senator Henderson: Look I think there’s been a decision made by the Federal Executive not to release that review. It has been leaked, I understand, based on reports in the newspaper but I think after the last nine months, and of course, we now have Angus Taylor leading the Liberal Party and we are looking forward, not backwards. We understand Stephen we’ve got a very big job to win back the trust of Australians. We’ve got a lot of hard work to do. There’s been a lot of discussion about what went wrong at the last federal election, we understand the mistakes that we made and Angus has made it very clear he wants to see an action plan come from the Federal Secretariat and from the executive as to how we can change the way we do things. And I’m looking forward to that rolling out. But I’ve got to say, Angus has just hit the ground running, very focused on the things that matter to all Australians, protecting our way of life, restoring our living standards, and really focusing on the needs of Australians in the face of this terrible government which is sending us backwards, whether it’s the economy, whether it’s energy security, or whether it’s immigration – immigration is too high, standards are too low. So as I say, Angus has hit the ground running. We are looking forward in the best interests of the Australian people.
Stephen Cenatiempo: Sarah, good to have you back on the frontbench. We’ll talk again in two week’s time.
Senator Henderson: Great to talk to you as always. Thank you so much, Stephen.