Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker
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Speaker 1: the news from The Australian. From the Australian, here's what's
Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Monday, September sixteenth.
Speaker 1: The government's trying to clean dodgy disability providers out of
Speaker 1: the NDS by forcing fifteen thousand operators to register so
Speaker 1: they can be properly regulated. Some disability advocates say that
Speaker 1: will force some soul traders out of business. A pedophile
Speaker 1: who groomed and abused six children has been sentenced to
Speaker 1: ten years without parole, but he'll get a lifetime taxpayer
Speaker 1: funded pension when he leaves jail because he was a
Speaker 1: senior public servant. One of his victims' mothers is crusading
Speaker 1: to have Stephen Mitchell stripped of his super entitlements. That's
Speaker 1: an exclusive Live now at The Australian dot Com dot
Speaker 1: au Meta says it's up to the Apple and Android
Speaker 1: app stores to enforce a social media ban on children,
Speaker 1: and claims parents don't use existing options to keep their
Speaker 1: kids safe. Online media companies are fighting back, urging the
Speaker 1: government to toughen up on tech giants today, how online
Speaker 1: safety will shape the looming federal election.
Speaker 2: I remember once I came across a video of a
Speaker 2: man being shot and was being recorded as he died.
Speaker 1: This is an eighteen year old woman talking about her
Speaker 1: early experiences on social media several years ago when she
Speaker 1: was in her mid teens.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it since, and I hope other young
Speaker 2: people never see it. It took away most of my innocence.
Speaker 1: This young woman, who isn't named, is quoted in a
Speaker 1: submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry on social media and
Speaker 1: Australian society. The submission is by News Corp Australia, which
Speaker 1: is the parent company of The Australian and US. Here
Speaker 1: at the front, the eighteen year old, whose words were
Speaker 1: read for US by a voice actor, spoke to a
Speaker 1: research company called Dinata, which News Corp commissioned to ask
Speaker 1: Australians about their experience in that intangible, magical, terrifying world
Speaker 1: that surrounds us at every moment social media.
Speaker 2: I also remember one time a person who I thought
Speaker 2: was a friend to be an unsolicited picture of his penis,
Speaker 2: and I blocked him without saying anything.
Speaker 1: Social media can bring us so much joy.
Speaker 2: Healthy chocolate it which you can also put in the
Speaker 2: fridge to make a moose. And what do we do
Speaker 2: when somebody hates us for no reason?
Speaker 1: Give them a reason with therapy.
Speaker 3: Or without therapy or without therapy.
Speaker 4: Please, because my husband actually just stole all of my cat.
Speaker 1: But we've all also probably had one of those experiences
Speaker 1: seeing something you can't unsee. The idea of children on
Speaker 1: social media consuming death and misery while they sit quietly
Speaker 1: in their bedrooms horrifies parents and kids themselves. But we're
Speaker 1: all addicted and none of us have any power, which
Speaker 1: is why this seemed like big news. The Prime Minister
Speaker 1: is vowing to ban children from social media by the
Speaker 1: end of the year.
Speaker 4: We know that social media is causing social harm.
Speaker 1: It's an idea first floated by Peter Dutton earlier this year.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, the government's introducing legislation that
Speaker 1: would put rules around doxing that's revealing the private information
Speaker 1: of someone without their consent, and misinformation or disinformation.
Speaker 4: From both sides of politics, we're seeing red hot rhetoric
Speaker 4: calling out the Elon Musks and Mark Zuckerberg's of this World.
Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is the Australian's chief political correspondent.
Speaker 4: For both Anthony Albanezi and Peter Dunton. Up alongside cost
Speaker 4: of living, social media harms is becoming a top tier issue.
Speaker 4: So we see this flurry of activity around Parliament House.
Speaker 4: I kept hearing it described to me as this is
Speaker 4: such a big water cooler issue. And the Prime Minister
Speaker 4: reveals that in this term of government that he will
Speaker 4: legislate a minimum age of access to social media and
Speaker 4: relevant tech platforms. Now, what he didn't have in that
Speaker 4: announcement was what was the optimum age? And my understanding
Speaker 4: is that while the Prime Minister supports Miss Dutton's idea
Speaker 4: of restricting teams up to sixteen, that some around his
Speaker 4: cabinet table and more broadly in caucus have differing opinions
Speaker 4: on that. So inside labor and probably more broadly, there's
Speaker 4: a bit of a debate over what that right age is,
Speaker 4: whether it's fourteen, fifteen or sixteen. We've seen Metaglobal Affairs
Speaker 4: chief Nick Klegg last Friday pushing back, suggesting that without
Speaker 4: the help of Apple and Google app stores it would
Speaker 4: be very difficult to implement.
Speaker 3: There are only two choke points in the modern Internet.
Speaker 3: It's the operating systems upon which everything else is built,
Speaker 3: which is iOS owned by Apple and Android by Google.
Speaker 3: If you ask each company's by whack them all of
Speaker 3: these things, it's going to be a nightmare for parents.
Speaker 3: So I think you know, in as much as the
Speaker 3: debate unfolds in Australia and elsewhere, if you're going to
Speaker 3: make a big move like that, you've got to make
Speaker 3: it workable. It's got to cover all the apps that
Speaker 3: young people use, not just some of them, and the
Speaker 3: only way is through the app stores. There's no other way.
Speaker 1: So Facebook says it's not on them, it's on Apple
Speaker 1: and Google.
Speaker 3: And this We've introduced around fifty tools over the last
Speaker 3: few years to give parents more control over the time
Speaker 3: that their kids spent who are they friending with? We
Speaker 3: default under sixteen year olds into a much more restrictive setting,
Speaker 3: so they can't be connected or communicated with by people
Speaker 3: they're not connected with, et cetera, et cetera. And guess what,
Speaker 3: even when we build these controls, parents don't use them.
Speaker 3: I think we'll be making some very significant announcements fairly
Speaker 3: soon to try and really make these controls simpler, easier,
Speaker 3: particularly reassuring for parents.
Speaker 4: Social media giants they've got huge war chests. They're multi
Speaker 4: trillion dollar companies, armies of lobbyists and lawyers, and the
Speaker 4: general view is when they see ad hoc legislation like this,
Speaker 4: they view it with contempt.
Speaker 1: So it seems like there's a lot going on, But
Speaker 1: media companies like News Corp Australia say in their submissions
Speaker 1: to the committee, in fact, the government isn't taking big,
Speaker 1: bold steps to really get social platforms under control. News
Speaker 1: Corp says it wants two things. First, for the government
Speaker 1: to force Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, to negotiate
Speaker 1: payments to news companies for the material it serves up
Speaker 1: to its users. This was happening. You might have heard
Speaker 1: about it. In twenty twenty one. Meta and Google paid
Speaker 1: Australian media outlets millions for their content. That's after Meta
Speaker 1: had a brief tantrum where it removed all news content
Speaker 1: then restored it. But this year Meta said it doesn't
Speaker 1: want to pay anymore and claimed its users don't really
Speaker 1: consume much news anyway.
Speaker 4: The News Media Bargaining Code was established by Josh Freedenberg.
Speaker 4: It wasn't easy to land for him, but he personally
Speaker 4: took on responsibility of negotiating this outcome with the big
Speaker 4: social media guys, in particular Meta and Google, and written
Speaker 4: into that code, if one of the major social media
Speaker 4: platforms or tech giants does withdraw not in good faith,
Speaker 4: they can designate that company. What we've seen is in
Speaker 4: late February early March, Meta shredded their deals, walked away.
Speaker 4: We've seen this kind of behavior from Meta across the world.
Speaker 4: So just over six months now, the Albenese government has
Speaker 4: talked a big game in terms of the effect of
Speaker 4: what Meta has done. Anthony Alberzi could have taken this
Speaker 4: on himself. Technically, the media Bargaining Code falls under Jim Charmers.
Speaker 4: Jim Charmers recused himself for a conflict of interest.
Speaker 1: The treasure is wife is a senior journalist with News
Speaker 1: Corp Australia.
Speaker 4: And instead of appointing a senior cabinet minister to lead
Speaker 4: negotiations with Meta and swiftly determine whether the company should
Speaker 4: be designated under the code, Anthony Alberanezi picked assistant Treasurer
Speaker 4: Stephen Jones. He sits outside of cabinet and he is
Speaker 4: the one who's been given the responsibility to determine the
Speaker 4: government's position. And again a lot of retric from mister Jones,
Speaker 4: we're hearing that he is seriously considering an alternative option
Speaker 4: of imposing a general levy, a government ordered levy, instead
Speaker 4: of invoking designation powers that the government has. I think
Speaker 4: the problem here is time is just ticking. There's only
Speaker 4: three joint sitting weeks left of the year, which means
Speaker 4: both the Senate and the House of Representative sitting because
Speaker 4: I think the government thought they might be having an
Speaker 4: early election. It's almost like they're dumping out all this
Speaker 4: legislation knowing full well that the reality of getting all
Speaker 4: of it through by the time of an election is
Speaker 4: looking very unlikely.
Speaker 1: Coming up, what the news organizations want? News Corp Wants
Speaker 1: the government to create a new system called a social License,
Speaker 1: where giant tech companies would have to pay an annual
Speaker 1: license fee to operate in Australia and be held liable
Speaker 1: for algorithmically amplified content. That's like the video of someone's death,
Speaker 1: which the eighteen year old we heard from at the
Speaker 1: top of the episode said she saw during COVID. So
Speaker 1: when she was fourteen or fifteen. News also wants the
Speaker 1: media companies to have to implement customer complaint systems so
Speaker 1: you can ring a call center here in Australia to
Speaker 1: raise a problem. They also want something called an ex
Speaker 1: and a competition framework that means regulations that look forward,
Speaker 1: anticipating harmful situations as they arise and taking action to
Speaker 1: regulate the platform's behavior. Jeff, these are our bosses. This
Speaker 1: is what they want. But as an independent analyst yourself,
Speaker 1: do you think the Albaneze government is actually going to
Speaker 1: designate meta and or would the opposition do it.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because the Coalition on a whole front of
Speaker 4: different policy areas are still sticking in that opposition space
Speaker 4: where they say they are the government of the day,
Speaker 4: it is their decision to make. But as that election
Speaker 4: comes around, we're going to have to see some clearer
Speaker 4: policy indicators from the coalition. As for the government, there's
Speaker 4: been lots of mixed messaging and a lot of concern
Speaker 4: that a more senior cabinet minister, potentially Michelle Rowland or
Speaker 4: even the Prime Minister himself haven't personally taken on this issue.
Speaker 3: What it means.
Speaker 4: We've got a junior minister sits outside of cabinet, who's
Speaker 4: leading this when you're recall Josh Freedenberg with support of
Speaker 4: Scott Morris and they had personally taken control of that
Speaker 4: and they got a big outcome from it. And if
Speaker 4: Australia doesn't designate, it really does undermine the future of
Speaker 4: what was a world first and a world leading media
Speaker 4: bargaining code.
Speaker 1: And what about that social license, Jeff, do you feel
Speaker 1: like that's an idea that either the government or the
Speaker 1: opposition are actually going to embrace.
Speaker 4: Look, it's a new idea that's being floated and I'm
Speaker 4: sure that both parties would have a close look at it.
Speaker 4: I did ask Michelle Roland about a social license and
Speaker 4: her response was there is nothing special about social media
Speaker 4: companies when it comes to adherence with Australian law. These
Speaker 4: companies aren't licensed in the way that traditional broadcasts and
Speaker 4: telecommunit loccasion services are, but they are regulated and they
Speaker 4: do have obligations to society. So not not an overwhelming
Speaker 4: kind of positive response.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting notion, isn't it that these companies
Speaker 1: are regulated? I mean, are they.
Speaker 4: Well, if you look at the tax arrangements if you
Speaker 4: look at their behaviors, I mean X now have no
Speaker 4: staff based in Australia. If you wanted to complain to
Speaker 4: any of these big companies, it's very, very difficult. None
Speaker 4: of that really shows that there's any sort of fear
Speaker 4: from them around Australian regulation.
Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's chief political correspondent. You can
Speaker 1: check out news Corps submission and read what the opposition
Speaker 1: and the social platforms say right now at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot au