House debates Questions without Notice
Antisemitism
Alicia Payne Canberra, Australian Labor Party
2:12 pm
(): My question is to the Minister for Education. What is the Albanese Labor government doing in education and online to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate?
Jason Clare Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education
I thank my friend the capital member for Canberra for her question—see what I did there? You can tell I'm a dad! There's no place for antisemitism or any type of racism or any type of hate in Australia. I think we all know we've got a lot of work to do here, and part of that is the work we do in education. That's why we set up the Antisemitism Education Taskforce, led by the great David Gonski. David is a towering figure in Australia, somebody I know is admired, respected and loved by people right across the chamber. They are working on how we combat antisemitism right across the education system. Following the Bondi attack we said we would review the National Curriculum, and that will be considered by education ministers when we meet next week.
But that's not the end of the work we need to do here. The truth is that it's just the start, because kids aren't born racist; kids aren't born with hate in their heart. This is something that's learnt; it's something that's taught. And I think if we're honest with ourselves we've got to look at what we can do to stop racism and hate fomenting in all its noxious forms. Part of it is what kids are taught at school, what's on the curriculum. But part of it is what kids are taught when they go online. I think Peter Dutton got it right this week when he called it a 'lawless jungle'. I will give you just a couple of horrific examples: people using artificial intelligence to make antisemitic songs and videos directly targeting kids; a Pixar-style animation set in a concentration camp; and fake news segments denying the Holocaust. All this was designed with AI, put online and then, with algorithms, sent to our kids—force-feeding our kids all this sort of rubbish, serving up hate on a plate to our kids.
I think we all know, if we look deeply into ourselves and think about this, that we need to do something about it. This is part of what the digital duty of care legislation that passed the House of Representatives today is about—doing something to crack down on these algorithms that are having this obvious impact on our kids. And it's not just me saying this; it's not just the government saying it. It's also the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, who recently said:
My hope is that a digital duty of care will make it harder for algorithms … to dish up this sort of content to Australians, particularly children.
I say to colleagues who voted against this today: it's not too late to change your mind and to vote for this when it gets to the Senate.