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 sixteen.
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 SOG 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 au.
Speaker 1: Meta says it's up to the Apple and Android app
Speaker 1: stores to enforce a social media ban on children, and
Speaker 1: claims parents don't use existing options to keep their kids safe.
Speaker 1: Online media companies are fighting back, urging the government to
Speaker 1: toughen up on tech giants today, how online safety will
Speaker 1: 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 being an unsolicited picture of his
Speaker 2: penis and I blocked him without saying anything.
Speaker 1: Social media can bring us so much.
Speaker 2: Joy, healthy chocolated it which you can also put in
Speaker 2: the fridge to make a moose.
Speaker 3: And what do we do when somebody hates us for
Speaker 3: no reason? Give them a reason with therapy or.
Speaker 1: Without therapy or without therapy. Please, because my husband actually
Speaker 1: just stole all of my cat. But we've all also
Speaker 1: probably had one of those experiences seeing something you can't unsee.
Speaker 1: The idea of children on social media consuming death and
Speaker 1: misery while they sit quietly in their bedrooms horrifies parents
Speaker 1: and kids themselves. But we're all addicted and none of
Speaker 1: us have any power, which is why this seemed like
Speaker 1: big news. The Prime Minister is vowing to ban children
Speaker 1: from social media by the end of the year. We
Speaker 1: know that social media is causing social harm. It's an
Speaker 1: idea first floated by Peter Dutton earlier this year. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, the government's introducing legislation that would
Speaker 1: put rules around doxing that's revealing the private information of
Speaker 1: 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 Alberanezi and Peter Dutton. Up alongside cost
Speaker 4: of living, social media harms is becoming a top tier issue.
Speaker 3: 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 there are.
Speaker 5: Only two choke points in the modern Internet. It's the
Speaker 5: operating systems upon which everything else is built, which is
Speaker 5: iOS owned by Apple and Android by Google. If you
Speaker 5: ask each company's by whack them all of these things,
Speaker 5: it's going to be a nightmare for parents. So I
Speaker 5: think you know, in as much as the debate unfolds
Speaker 5: in Australia and elsewhere, if you're going to make a
Speaker 5: big move like that, you've got to make it workable.
Speaker 5: It's got to cover all the apps that young people use,
Speaker 5: not just some of them, and the only way is
Speaker 5: 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 5: And this We've introduced around fifty tools over the last
Speaker 5: few years to give parents more control over the time
Speaker 5: that their kids spent who are they friending with? We
Speaker 5: default under sixteen year olds into a much more restrictive setting,
Speaker 5: so they can't be connected or communicated with by people
Speaker 5: they're not connected with, et cetera, et cetera. And guess what,
Speaker 5: even when we build these controls, parents don't use them.
Speaker 5: I think we'll be making some very significant announcements fairly
Speaker 5: soon to try and really make these controls simpler, easier,
Speaker 5: 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, lawyers, and the general
Speaker 4: 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 Alberenese 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. He's 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 Alberizi picked assistant Treasurer
Speaker 4: Stephen Jones.
Speaker 3: He sits outside of Cabinet and he.
Speaker 4: Is the one who's been given the responsibility to determine
Speaker 4: the government's position. And again a lot of rehtric from
Speaker 4: mister Jones, we're hearing that he is seriously considering an
Speaker 4: alternative option of imposing a general levy, a government ordered levy,
Speaker 4: instead of invoking designation powers that the government has.
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 4: Problem here is time is just ticking. There's only three
Speaker 4: joint sitting weeks left of the year, which means both
Speaker 4: the Senate and the House of Representative sitting because I
Speaker 4: think the government thought they might be having an early election.
Speaker 4: It's almost like they're dumping out all this legislation knowing
Speaker 4: full well that the reality of getting all of it
Speaker 4: through by the time of an election is 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: ant 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 Albanezi 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 4: What it means we've got a junior minister sits outside
Speaker 4: of cabinet who's leading this when you're a recall Josh
Speaker 4: Freedenberg with support of Scott Morris, and they had personally
Speaker 4: taken control of that and they got a big outcome
Speaker 4: from it. And if Australia doesn't designate, it really does
Speaker 4: undermine the future of what was a world first at
Speaker 4: a world leading media 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.
Speaker 3: These companies aren't licensed.
Speaker 4: In the way that traditional broadcasts and telecommunity location services are,
Speaker 4: but they are regulated and they do have obligations to society.
Speaker 3: So not an overwhelming 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 3: Well, if you look at the tax arrangements.
Speaker 4: If you look at their behaviors, I mean X now
Speaker 4: have no staff based in Australia. If you wanted to
Speaker 4: complain to any of these big companies, it's very, very difficult.
Speaker 4: None of that really shows that there's any sort of
Speaker 4: fear from them around Australian regulation.
Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's chief political correspondent. You can
Speaker 1: check out news Corp submission and read what the opposition
Speaker 1: and the social platforms say right now at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot au