28 June 2024

Topics: META and parliamentary inquiry into social media, Julian Assange, Fatima Payman

E&OE

Tom Connell:

Joining me Shadow Environment Minister Jonathon Duniam, thank you for your time. Not sure how much of this you caught but the headlines are pretty dramatic. What have you made of the META defence today? No damage at all, no harm to children apparently, just helpful apps.

Senator Duniam:

Tone deaf is the first word that comes to mind. I mean, they didn’t look incredibly comfortable making the arguments that they were in the face of heartfelt, heartrending testimony via some of the members of that committee. I mean to suggest that the test is ‘well, we provide more good than harm’, and I’d argue they’d be applying a pretty subjective measure to how they assess that, I don’t think is the right measure. I mean, one death is what’s being referred to. There is so much more damage that’s been done. I’ve got three young boys who all live in a world where access to social media is there and it keeps me certainly awake at night to think about what they might have access to or indeed who might have access to them and what they’re sending to them. So, I think they do need to come to the party on this. Good corporate citizenship is required when you’re in a position of responsibility and they are and they need to step up.

Tom Connell:

And the news side of things, I mean, they’ve basically said they’re willing to just scrap all news on their sites, you know, if this negotiation doesn’t work out, I guess, I don’t want to pay for it at all. I mean, these are really wealthy companies, what do you make of their approach and how willing should the government be to say if you’re not going to, you know, play by the rules, go through the new bargaining code, perhaps Facebook’s just better off not being accessible in Australia.

Senator Duniam:

Well, I mean that that would be an extreme step to ban an entire platform from a market. I mean, they’re doing what companies like that do and that is flexing. Well, we’re a smaller market than some of the ones they play in and on that basis, they’re willing to sort of roll the dice and see if they can get the government to buckle, but I think we need to pursue the arrangements that have been put in place where they should pay for content. I don’t think it’s fair that they’re able to distribute it and make money, and they are, as you said before, wealthy organisations that we’re talking about here, out of other people’s work without paying for that benefit. If you’re playing music in your shop, your small retail outlet, you’ve got to pay a licence fee for that so how they think they should have a different set of rules applied to them I really don’t understand, but hopefully some common sense prevails and the flex stops and they just do what’s right and in the interests of their users – clients here in Australia.

Tom Connell:

Yeah, it’s pretty piddling amount of money compared to what the company rakes in. Of course, we’ll see what they end up doing. Interested in your thoughts on, well, I guess the comparison, so the Prime Minister had a welcoming phone call for Julian Assange and there was clearly, I don’t know if you’d call it a victory lap, the government keen to say it helped get him back. Compared to David McBride and his treatment as a whistleblower here in Australia, what did you make of that comparison?

Senator Duniam:

Well, the Prime Minister especially has lent in pretty hard on this and the comparisons I’ve heard up until this morning were comparisons between Cheng Lei and Sean Turnell, and Mr Assange, and the difference being that the two aforementioned parties were innocent, Mr Assange has pled guilty and was convicted, yes as part of a plea deal. But it strikes me as odd that there has been, as you say, this victory lap and seeking to hoover up kudos where possible when the same wasn’t applied for bringing home innocent people. I just think it sends the wrong message around what this government’s willing to do, who they’re willing to stand up for, if we’re going to go out there and beat the drum strongly in this instance, but perhaps not so in others. It was very strange for the leader of our country to be so forward leaning on this issue in particular.

Tom Connell:

What do you make of whistleblower laws? Someone like the McBride case, where it’s clearly, on one level you know, damaging for our reputation, but plenty of people will say in the public interest to know what was really happening in this war.

Senator Duniam:

Yeah, look I think that there obviously is a need for protection of people who do want to blow the whistle on genuine corruption and then, of course, that threshold is a an entirely different debate. I mean, you would not be surprised to learn that as a member of many Senate committees, you get public servants who, under the condition of anonymity, will come forward to say ‘you need to know this is happening’, or ‘they told you this at Senate estimates, this is wrong’, and you know they do that anonymously because they fear for their jobs, they fear for retribution, and you know for outsiders like, say Mr McBride, yeah, they fear for their safety. So I think there is a space for it. How you get the measure and balance right is something that we need to look at very closely but I don’t think the power of the state should extend to preventing people from speaking the truth.

Tom Connell:

Alright, just finally I haven’t seen anywhere a press release from you saying that it’s great to welcome the Labor Party is now this, this party that allows freedom of expression and crossing the floor after Fatima Payman did it and she just gets a holiday, one week off from Labor caucus, you must be thrilled the Labor party’s joining in that exercise with the Liberal party.

Senator Duniam:

Yeah, well, the Liberal Party being no stranger to floor crossings, it happens, we embrace and draw strength from the fact that we aren’t a homogeneous group of people who all think the same and you know, it plays out publicly and Labor have been pretty keen to criticise us on that. But solidarity is something Labor have traded on for so long now and you know the greatest example of that was I think the leader of the government in the Senate, Penny Wong, who year after year after year voted against something very close to her heart, and that was of course the issue of same sex marriage. She would have loved to have voted a different way, but because her party rules bound her something so close and personal to her, she didn’t do it. So this Prime Minister has set a new precedent, he’s allowing this to happen, I’ll be very interested to see if a motion is moved next week in the Senate to say, protect Christian school’s right to hire and fire who they like on the basis of belief, whether senators like Helen Polley and Deb O’Neill get treated the same way as Fatima Payman, as AI takes over our interview there I just noticed.

Tom Connell:

Ok, what do you think though, on the sort of serious side, you know it’s a pretty emotional issue I guess, have you spoken to her and you don’t agree with what she’s done but something pretty close to her heart around sort of saying, you know, respect you as a politician as someone going through with how they feel about something?

Senator Duniam:

Well, Fatima and I have served on committees together. I haven’t discussed this issue with her, but it’s quite obvious that she feels very strongly, she wouldn’t have gone and done what she’s done which is a very dramatic step in the case of this issue and you know, for a first term Senator no less. The strain is clearly there. I don’t think she’s done this light-heartedly and she feels strongly, as you suggest. I don’t agree with her at all. I think she’s taking very much the wrong approach but she’s doing it on behalf of the community that believes there’s a cause there. She’s entitled to do that in our democracy. But I think the real issue is leadership from the Prime Minister. Is he going to allow this to happen again and again or is this a one-off special rules for Fatima Payman?

Tom Connell:

No jumper today. Are you using that energy rebate, maybe just turning up the heater a bit there in the office?

Senator Duniam:

Well, I couldn’t find a jumper dazzling enough to wear on your program, but next week I’ll make sure I’ll don something especially colourful.

Tom Connell:

Good to hear. Jonathon, thank you.