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Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker

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Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play

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Speaker 1: the news from The Australian. From the Australian, here's what's

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Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Monday, September sixteen.

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Speaker 1: The government's trying to clean dodgy disability providers out of

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Speaker 1: the NDS by forcing fifteen thousand operators to register so

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Speaker 1: they can be properly regulated. Some disability advocates say that

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Speaker 1: will force some SOG traders out of business. A pedophile

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Speaker 1: who groomed and abused six children has been sentenced to

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Speaker 1: ten years without parole, but he'll get a lifetime taxpayer

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Speaker 1: funded pension when he leaves jail because he was a

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Speaker 1: senior public servant. One of his victims' mothers is crusading

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Speaker 1: to have Stephen Mitchell stripped of his super entitlements. That's

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Speaker 1: an exclusive live now at The Australian. Dot com au.

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Speaker 1: Meta says it's up to the Apple and Android app

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Speaker 1: stores to enforce a social media ban on children, and

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Speaker 1: claims parents don't use existing options to keep their kids safe.

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Speaker 1: Online media companies are fighting back, urging the government to

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Speaker 1: toughen up on tech giants today, how online safety will

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Speaker 1: shape the looming federal election.

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Speaker 2: I remember once I came across a video of a

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Speaker 2: man being shot and was being recorded as he died.

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Speaker 1: This is an eighteen year old woman talking about her

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Speaker 1: early experiences on social media several years ago when she

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Speaker 1: was in her mid teens.

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Speaker 2: I haven't seen it since, and I hope other young

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Speaker 2: people never see it. It took away most of my innocence.

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Speaker 1: This young woman, who isn't named, is quoted in a

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Speaker 1: submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry on social media and

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Speaker 1: Australian society. The submission is by News Corp Australia, which

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Speaker 1: is the parent company of The Australian and US. Here

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Speaker 1: at the front, the eighteen year old, whose words were

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Speaker 1: read for US by a voice actor, spoke to a

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Speaker 1: research company called Dinata, which News Corp commissioned to ask

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Speaker 1: Australians about their experience in that intangible, magical, terrifying world

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Speaker 1: that surrounds us at every moment social media.

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Speaker 2: I also remember one time a person who I thought

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Speaker 2: was a friend to being an unsolicited picture of his

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Speaker 2: penis and I blocked him without saying anything.

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Speaker 1: Social media can bring us so much.

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Speaker 2: Joy, healthy chocolated it which you can also put in

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Speaker 2: the fridge to make a moose.

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Speaker 3: And what do we do when somebody hates us for

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Speaker 3: no reason? Give them a reason with therapy or.

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Speaker 1: Without therapy or without therapy. Please, because my husband actually

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Speaker 1: just stole all of my cat. But we've all also

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Speaker 1: probably had one of those experiences seeing something you can't unsee.

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Speaker 1: The idea of children on social media consuming death and

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Speaker 1: misery while they sit quietly in their bedrooms horrifies parents

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Speaker 1: and kids themselves. But we're all addicted and none of

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Speaker 1: us have any power, which is why this seemed like

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Speaker 1: big news. The Prime Minister is vowing to ban children

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Speaker 1: from social media by the end of the year. We

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Speaker 1: know that social media is causing social harm. It's an

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Speaker 1: idea first floated by Peter Dutton earlier this year. And

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Speaker 1: at the same time, the government's introducing legislation that would

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Speaker 1: put rules around doxing that's revealing the private information of

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Speaker 1: someone without their consent, and misinformation or disinformation.

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Speaker 4: From both sides of politics, we're seeing red hot rhetoric

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Speaker 4: calling out the Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerberg's of this world.

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Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's chief political correspondent.

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Speaker 4: For both Anthony Alberanezi and Peter Dutton. Up alongside cost

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Speaker 4: of living, social media harms is becoming a top tier issue.

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Speaker 3: So we see this flurry of activity around Parliament House.

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Speaker 4: I kept hearing it described to me as this is

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Speaker 4: such a big water cooler issue. And the Prime Minister

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Speaker 4: reveals that in this term of government that he will

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Speaker 4: legislate a minimum age of access to social media and

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Speaker 4: relevant tech platforms. Now, what he didn't have in that

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Speaker 4: announcement was what was the optimum age? And my understanding

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Speaker 4: is that while the Prime Minister supports Miss Dutton's idea

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Speaker 4: of restricting teams up to sixteen, that some around his

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Speaker 4: cabinet table and more broadly in caucus have differing opinions

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Speaker 4: on that. So inside labor and probably more broadly, there's

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Speaker 4: a bit of a debate over what that right age is,

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Speaker 4: whether it's fourteen, fifteen or sixteen. We've seen Metaglobal Affairs

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Speaker 4: chief Nick Klegg last Friday pushing back, suggesting that without

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Speaker 4: the help of Apple and Google app stores, it would

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Speaker 4: be very difficult to implement there are.

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Speaker 5: Only two choke points in the modern Internet. It's the

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Speaker 5: operating systems upon which everything else is built, which is

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Speaker 5: iOS owned by Apple and Android by Google. If you

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Speaker 5: ask each company's by whack them all of these things,

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Speaker 5: it's going to be a nightmare for parents. So I

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Speaker 5: think you know, in as much as the debate unfolds

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Speaker 5: in Australia and elsewhere, if you're going to make a

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Speaker 5: big move like that, you've got to make it workable.

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Speaker 5: It's got to cover all the apps that young people use,

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Speaker 5: not just some of them, and the only way is

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Speaker 5: through the app stores. There's no other way.

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Speaker 1: So Facebook says it's not on them, it's on Apple

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Speaker 1: and Google.

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Speaker 5: And this We've introduced around fifty tools over the last

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Speaker 5: few years to give parents more control over the time

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Speaker 5: that their kids spent who are they friending with? We

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Speaker 5: default under sixteen year olds into a much more restrictive setting,

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Speaker 5: so they can't be connected or communicated with by people

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Speaker 5: they're not connected with, et cetera, et cetera. And guess what,

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Speaker 5: even when we build these controls, parents don't use them.

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Speaker 5: I think we'll be making some very significant announcements fairly

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Speaker 5: soon to try and really make these controls simpler, easier,

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Speaker 5: particularly reassuring for parents.

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Speaker 4: Social media giants they've got huge war chests. They're multi

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Speaker 4: trillion dollar companies, armies of lobbyists, lawyers, and the general

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Speaker 4: view is when they see ad hoc legislation like this,

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Speaker 4: they view it with contempt.

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Speaker 1: So it seems like there's a lot going on, But

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Speaker 1: media companies like News Corp Australia say in their submissions

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Speaker 1: to the committee, in fact, the government isn't taking big,

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Speaker 1: bold steps to really get social platforms under control. News

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Speaker 1: Corp says it wants two things. First, for the government

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Speaker 1: to force Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, to negotiate

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Speaker 1: payments to news companies for the material it serves up

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Speaker 1: to its users. This was happening. You might have heard

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Speaker 1: about it. In twenty twenty one. Meta and Google paid

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Speaker 1: Australian media outlets millions for their content. That's after Meta

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Speaker 1: had a brief tantrum where it removed all news content

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Speaker 1: then restored it. But this year Meta said it doesn't

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Speaker 1: want to pay anymore and claimed its users don't really

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Speaker 1: consume much news anyway.

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Speaker 4: The News Media Bargaining Code was established by Josh Freedenberg.

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Speaker 4: It wasn't easy to land for him, but he personally

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Speaker 4: took on responsibility of negotiating this outcome with the big

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Speaker 4: social media guys, in particular Meta and Google, and written

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Speaker 4: into that code, if one of the major social media

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Speaker 4: platforms or tech giants does withdraw not in good faith,

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Speaker 4: they can designate that company. What we've seen is in

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Speaker 4: late February early March, Meta shredded their deals, walked away.

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Speaker 4: We've seen this kind of behavior from Meta across the world.

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Speaker 4: So just over six months now, the Alberenese government has

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Speaker 4: talked a big game in terms of the effect of

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Speaker 4: what Meta has done. Anthony Alberzi could have taken this

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Speaker 4: on himself. Technically, the media Bargaining Code falls under Jim Charmers.

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Speaker 4: Jim Charmers recused himself for a conflict of interest.

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Speaker 1: The treasure is wife. He's a senior journalist with News

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Speaker 1: Corp Australia.

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Speaker 4: And instead of appointing a senior cabinet minister to lead

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Speaker 4: negotiations with Meta and swiftly determine whether the company should

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Speaker 4: be designated under the code, Anthony Alberizi picked assistant Treasurer

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Speaker 4: Stephen Jones.

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Speaker 3: He sits outside of Cabinet and he.

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Speaker 4: Is the one who's been given the responsibility to determine

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Speaker 4: the government's position. And again a lot of rehtric from

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Speaker 4: mister Jones, we're hearing that he is seriously considering an

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Speaker 4: alternative option of imposing a general levy, a government ordered levy,

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Speaker 4: instead of invoking designation powers that the government has.

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Speaker 3: I think the.

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Speaker 4: Problem here is time is just ticking. There's only three

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Speaker 4: joint sitting weeks left of the year, which means both

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Speaker 4: the Senate and the House of Representative sitting because I

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Speaker 4: think the government thought they might be having an early election.

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Speaker 4: It's almost like they're dumping out all this legislation knowing

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Speaker 4: full well that the reality of getting all of it

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Speaker 4: through by the time of an election is looking very unlikely.

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Speaker 1: Coming up, what the news organizations want? News Corp wants

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Speaker 1: the government to create a new system called a social License,

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Speaker 1: where giant tech companies would have to pay an annual

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Speaker 1: license fee to operate in Australia and be held liable

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Speaker 1: for algorithmically amplified content. That's like the video of someone's death,

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Speaker 1: which the eighteen year old we heard from at the

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Speaker 1: top of the episode said she saw during COVID so

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Speaker 1: when she was fourteen or fifteen. News also wants the

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Speaker 1: media companies to have to implement customer complaint systems so

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Speaker 1: you can ring a call center here in Australia to

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Speaker 1: raise a problem. They also want something called an ex

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Speaker 1: ant a competition framework that means regulations that look forward,

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Speaker 1: anticipating harmful situations as they arise and taking action to

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Speaker 1: regulate the platform's behavior. Jeff, these are our bosses. This

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Speaker 1: is what they want. But as an independent analyst yourself,

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Speaker 1: do you think the Albanezi government is actually going to

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Speaker 1: designate meta and or would the opposition do it.

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Speaker 4: It's interesting because the Coalition on a whole front of

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Speaker 4: different policy areas are still sticking in that opposition space

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Speaker 4: where they say they are the government of the day,

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Speaker 4: it is their decision to make. But as that election

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Speaker 4: comes around, we're going to have to see some clearer

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Speaker 4: policy indicators from the coalition. As for the government, there's

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Speaker 4: been lots of mixed messaging and a lot of concern

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Speaker 4: that a more senior cabinet minister, potentially Michelle Rowland or

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Speaker 4: even the Prime Minister himself haven't personally taken on this issue.

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Speaker 4: What it means we've got a junior minister sits outside

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Speaker 4: of cabinet who's leading this when you're a recall Josh

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Speaker 4: Freedenberg with support of Scott Morris, and they had personally

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Speaker 4: taken control of that and they got a big outcome

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Speaker 4: from it. And if Australia doesn't designate, it really does

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Speaker 4: undermine the future of what was a world first at

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Speaker 4: a world leading media bargaining code.

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Speaker 1: And what about that social license, Jeff, do you feel

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Speaker 1: like that's an idea that either the government or the

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Speaker 1: opposition are actually going to embrace.

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Speaker 4: Look, it's a new idea that's being floated and I'm

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Speaker 4: sure that both parties would have a close look at it.

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Speaker 4: I did ask Michelle Roland about a social license and

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Speaker 4: her response was there is nothing special about social media

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Speaker 4: companies when it comes to adherence with Australian law.

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Speaker 3: These companies aren't licensed.

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Speaker 4: In the way that traditional broadcasts and telecommunity location services are,

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Speaker 4: but they are regulated and they do have obligations to society.

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Speaker 3: So not an overwhelming kind of positive response.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting notion, isn't it that these companies

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Speaker 1: are regulated? I mean, are they.

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Speaker 3: Well, if you look at the tax arrangements.

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Speaker 4: If you look at their behaviors, I mean X now

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Speaker 4: have no staff based in Australia. If you wanted to

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Speaker 4: complain to any of these big companies, it's very, very difficult.

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Speaker 4: None of that really shows that there's any sort of

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Speaker 4: fear from them around Australian regulation.

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Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's chief political correspondent. You can

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Speaker 1: check out news Corp submission and read what the opposition

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Speaker 1: and the social platforms say right now at the Australian

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Speaker 1: dot com dot au