David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) and the Minister for Trade and Tourism (Senator Farrell) to questions without notice asked today.

Could I first deal with the answers given in response to a question from my colleague Senator Hanson-Young. Senator Hanson-Young asked a simple question. We've now seen a high-profile case in the United States be delivered against some of the biggest, meanest global platforms for the toxic nature of the product they sell—hundreds of millions of dollars ordered in damages. In light of that, Senator Hanson-Young asked when is this government, the Albanese Labor government, going to move from empty words to actually legislating a digital duty of care? I've read the answers, and I've listened carefully to the answers. It was the biggest load of waffle you could ever imagine.

There was an extraordinary inability to come to grips with the core issues. When are we going to get a digital duty of care? Anyone who listened to the answer from the Albanese Labor government would have no idea and, indeed would be fearful that they weren't quite sure how to turn a computer on. That would be the fair summary you'd get from Labor's response to Senator Hanson-Young's basic question. So why do we need a digital duty of care, and why do we need the second tranche of the privacy reforms? It's because this government, the Labor government—and this is consistent with what the coalition did when they were in government—have given a blank cheque to the tech platforms. Whatever they want, whatever data they want to suck out of Australians, however they want to manipulate Australians and however they want to maximise their profit by driving hate and division, the coalition and Labor and their mates in One Nation, who live off that hate and division, say, 'Whatever you like.' They give a blank cheque to these big US tech platforms.

Australians are sick of it. They're sick of a government that refuses and fails to back in the interests of Australians and, instead, deregulates for some of the most noxious players on the planet. What do we need to do? Well, what we could do, first of all, is a lift and shift of the regulations in place in Europe, which actually put some constraints on big tech. They force transparency on algorithms. They force transparency on the data that they hold about Europeans and actually give people in Europe the right to say no. In an extraordinary moment I recall in the AI inquiry we had at the end of the last parliament, Meta came in, and it had just been discovered that Meta had scraped off every Australian Facebook post, Instagram post and photo going back to 2007 that had been put on a public post, and they had fed it into their AI. They fed every single one of them—-every comment, every post, every photo—into their AI, and there was this faux outrage from Labor at the time: 'How could you do this? This is terrible.'

I remember asking Meta, 'Why did you do this to Australian users, and why didn't you do it to European users?' And they said, 'There's a law that prevents us from doing that in Europe.' They actually have laws. What has happened in the, what, more than 12 months since then? Zip, zero, nada—from this government. Our privacy rights, our online protection rights, are not even fit for the 20th century let alone the 21st century. Give us a digital duty of care. Lift and shift from those European regulations and controls the platforms already know how to comply with to give us the right to say no and help put those transparency provisions in so we can at least see what's been fed into these toxic algorithms and make decisions to get away from them. That's what's needed, but why won't Labor do it? Because they are frightened of retaliation from Donald Trump. It's the same story, time after time—complete spinelessness. They won't take on Donald Trump, because they think that he's going to go and say mean things about them if Australia takes on American tech. Well, it's about time to grow a spine.

Can I finish by reflecting on some of the answers from Senator Wong. Senator Wong stated that we've got a fuel crisis, we're working with our neighbours, and we're working with our regions. She mentioned we're working with Singapore. Well, I wonder if Minister Wong has read the statements that were just given by Minister Wong's counterpart, the Singaporean Foreign minister, who, in the last 24 hours, told some basic truths. He said that the US was now 'a revisionist power'—this is the language of the Singaporean foreign minister. He said:

Basically, the underwriter of this world order has now become a revisionist power, and some people would even say a disruptor.

Imagine if our Foreign minister was speaking with independence and truth like that.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion to take note of answers. Reflecting on the responses given by Senator Wong, the Australian people expect independence and a bit of spine from their government. Yet what we have witnessed since the beginning of America's war on Iran—and the escalation and expansion of the war in the Middle East, which has now been going for so many years and for which the US bears such incredible responsibility—from the Australian government is utter spinelessness. This government will bear, for all time, the shame of being the first nation in the world to back in Donald Trump's war on Iran—to look at this man and his administration's vile track record, in every area of policy, and go: 'That's the one. We'll go all the way with him. That sounds like a good idea.'

Tonight, across the country, families, from Western Australia to South Australia, to Victoria, to New South Wales, to Queensland, and in the NT and here in the ACT, and down in Tasmania, are paying the price for the spinelessness and the lack of vision of this government. Not only has the government followed along behind the United States into an escalation of this conflict—preventing us from playing a role in the urgently-needed de-escalation, the urgently-needed negotiation for the urgently-needed peace that is the only thing that will give us any hope of restoring the conditions necessary to relieve people's cost-of-living pressures, let alone to actually end the bloodshed that continues, right now, as we debate this question—but also they sit here condemned of one of the most shocking acts of failure to do the basic work of government that I have seen in nearly a decade in this place.

I can't believe it has to be a statement made this evening, but our nation is an island nation, and, in a time of crisis, our access to the basics required to function as a country depends on one of two things: either our ability to manufacture, create and supply those basics here at home, or our ability to source those basics from the region around us. Now, this dynamic is not new; it has always existed, and the COVID-19 pandemic threw this into clear relief. It showed us, in devastating detail, that in so many areas of essential goods and services, from the supply of food to the supply of medication to the supply of petrol, diesel and fertiliser, where once had existed systems able to supply the community in times of crisis, systems able to self-sustain, now existed privatised, corporate run systems that existed solely for making a profit and that those systems were not fit for purpose in an emergency. And what did you people do with the years given to you to act? Tonight, people would be fair enough in looking to this place and answering, 'Nothing, and we are now paying the price.'

Question agreed to.