April 20, 2023
MADELEINE MORRIS: A parliamentary committee inquiry will begin today public hearings into foreign interference through social media. The new Coalition Shadow Home Affairs spokesman, Senator James Paterson, joins us now from Canberra. He chairs the committee. Thanks very much for speaking to us, James Paterson.
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning.
MORRIS: What are you expecting to hear about the threats?
PATERSON: Well, we're facing two interrelated, very serious threats. One is the way in which authoritarian states have weaponised Western headquartered social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. And the other problem is social media platforms who are already headquartered in authoritarian states and therefore subject to their control. Platforms like TikTok and WeChat. We've already seen the government ban TikTok from government users' devices because it represents a serious espionage risk to them. But there
are millions of other Australians who use apps like that who are having their data harvested and which could potentially be accessed in mainland China by the Chinese Communist Party and who are also open to influence on that platform if the Chinese government ever sought to use it as a way of pumping disinformation into our political system...
MORRIS: I'm so sorry to interrupt. TikTok's response to that is always that the servers aren't in China, they're in Singapore, they're in the United States, and they've always basically said that the CCP doesn't actually have access to that data.
PATERSON: Yes. Well, TikTok also said that when it was reported that they had used their application to target individual users in the United States to surveil them, that they couldn't do that. It wasn't even technically possible and would never do that. But they subsequently had to admit two months later that not only was it technically possible but that they'd done so because they were surveilling individual journalists who were writing critical articles of TikTok in an attempt to identify their sources and they had to fire four employees who were engaged in that conduct. So unfortunately, we can't take TikTok's denial seriously. And when the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, the European Union, New Zealand, Canada, many other countries have taken action to address this problem, I think we have to recognise it is a serious problem. Certainly, in the past on platforms like TikTok, foreign state disinformation has been rife. They are permissive platforms. WeChat is equally guilty of this and that's very dangerous in the strategic environment we're going into. We don't want authoritarian governments to be able to undermine our national unity or undermine our social cohesion, and we really need to step up our defences and harden our systems against these sort of attacks.
MORRIS: One of the organisations you are going to be hearing from is the US Federal Communications Commission. One of their Commissioners has been very outspoken, advocating for a total TikTok ban in the US, indeed the state of Montana has just announced that for their state only. Is that something that you are expecting to hear from them? Would you be open to that as a recommendation?
PATERSON: Indeed, I was in the United States personally only a few weeks ago to discuss this with legislators and members of the administration and they are very seriously looking at all options, including potentially banning the app if the national security risk posed by it can't be solved by more modest means. They're also looking, for example, at forcing ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to divest TikTok to a non-Chinese owner. The value of that, as it would do, would sever that link between the Chinese Communist Party and the app and remove at least some of those national security concerns posed by the company. So, we need to look in Australia at all of those options too. It would be a terrible thing if the United States solved this problem for their users, but Australian users weren't included as part of that solution. So I want to make sure the government is leaning forward on this, talking to our
friends and allies in the United States and elsewhere around the world, because we're all grappling with this same problem as Western liberal democracies.
MORRIS: Just a final question about social media. Another one, Twitter has decided to put a label on public broadcasters, including the ABC, as "government funded media" to the CBC, to NPR. What do you think about that?
PATERSON: Well, I don't have a problem with the sources of funding of media outlets being identified, but it's really important that [Twitter]...
MORRIS: You mean Twitter, sorry?
PATERSON: Who was once a real leader in identifying people who are closely associated with authoritarian governments, that they be labelled accurately. So, Twitter was one of the first companies in the world to say that, for example, a Chinese state media person is effectively a government spokesman. That's actually been watered down in recent years under the new ownership of the company. I am concerned about that, and we'll be pursuing that with them.
MORRIS: I think that there's an inference that somehow government interferes with the ABC in that way?
PATERSON: Well, I think Australians understand that the ABC is editorially independent, that the government of the day, much to the frustration of politicians occasionally, has no influence at all on the editorial policies of the ABC, and I think that's pretty clear.
MORRIS: Just on China, Mark McGowan, WA Premier has been on a trip to China. He's reportedly said that when the PM visits that he should bring all of the State Premiers and the Territory first Ministers with him, but that would be really good for relations. What do you think of that idea?
PATERSON: I think it's a good thing that Australian politicians are able to visit China again. It was unfortunate that that was banned for so long and obviously the COVID pandemic extended that even further. But the way that politicians conduct themselves when they're overseas, including in China, is equally important to when they visit. Mark McGowan has been caught this week on a hot mic making an inappropriate comment about Andrew Hastie. When politicians are overseas, they're not representing their political party, they're
representing their country and they have to adopt a Team Australia approach. It's really inappropriate, particularly when you're in an authoritarian country, to run down your political rivals back home in Australia, because that does play into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. One of their objectives is to divide us internally and to get us to fight amongst ourselves. We need to present a platform of national unity when we travel abroad. Mark McGowan has failed to do that, and I think he should apologise.
MORRIS: James Paterson Just a final quick question about our main story this morning. The RBA changes, it's not your portfolio, but the Treasurer is expected to accept all 51 recommendations. Will the Coalition support that?
PATERSON: These are very significant changes to the way the RBA operates and the Coalition has been consulted by the committee reviewing the RBA throughout this process. So, we certainly welcome the release of the review. We will have to go through our party processes, but as a starting point, I think bipartisanship is important here. Monetary policy stability is one of the essential features of an advanced economy. And if monetary policy radically changed when governments changed, that would undermine confidence in the RBA. So, we're certainly minded to start from a place of bipartisanship on this.
MORRIS: Thanks very much, Senator James Paterson.
PATERSON: Thank you.
ENDS
