April 5, 2023
Tuesday 4 April 2023
Interview with Chris Kenny, The Kenny Report
Subjects: TikTok finally banned on federal devices, Voice to Parliament
CHRIS KENNY: Liberal Senator James Paterson has led the charge on this issue. He's in the US at the moment and I asked him, what's wrong with TikTok?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, TikTok poses a number of national security threats to Australians. The first is an espionage risk that relates to their privacy and security. And that's because the app collects an enormous amount of personal information. And since July last year, when they admitted in correspondence with me, we now know that they allow that data to be accessed in China, and that means it could fall into the hands of the Chinese government because every Chinese citizen and company is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party and obligated under intelligence laws to hand it over. That's threat number one. Threat number two is a broader foreign interference threat. It will be trivially easy for the Communist Party to direct TikTok to use its algorithm to suppress information which is critical of the CCP, to provide information that supports their narratives or just to sow division and disharmony and undermine national unity in democracies. While it's good that the Albanese governments finally acted to ban the app from government devices, that doesn't help 6 to 7 million Australians who also use the app and they need protection too.
KENNY: You of course warned the government about the possible risks of TikTok back in July last year. That's getting close to a year ago. Why have they taken so long to react?
PATERSON: That's right, Chris. I've been warning the government about this, both directly in correspondence with the Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security in July last year, to the Prime Minister in October and publicly for months on end. And I am bewildered as to why it has taken them so long to act on this. All of our allies and friends started acting months ago including the United States. It's been very clear this is a national security risk and unfortunately we now are the last country of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership to act. We've fallen behind France, the European Union and many others, and that's very disappointing. But at least we've now acted in some regard. But there's more to do now.
KENNY: Now we've got Cabinet Minister Bill Shorten and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews both saying that they've now deleted the app. What information could have been shared in the interim?
PATERSON: Unfortunately, TikTok could have collected a lot of information on them and the other Australians using the app. It collects the biometric information of all of its users, that includes your face prints and your voice print. It persistently requests access to your calendar and your contacts. It even tracks your physical location. The WiFi networks that you've logged into, the other apps that are installed on your phone, it even has the power to record the keystrokes you enter into the app, including in its browser, which means it could harvest your credit card information or your passwords. That is a treasure trove of data and information that will be of massive interest to the Chinese Communist Party on particularly high profile Australians.
KENNY: It is extraordinary stuff. At least the government has taken the right decision now. Do you expect a reaction, retaliation from China in response to Australia's decision?
PATERSON: Well, certainly when the previous government led the world and Huawei from our 5G network in August 2018, there was a very strong response from the Chinese government. And when I earlier this year forced the government to ban Hikvision and Dahua surveillance cameras from government sites, there was also condemnation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So it wouldn't surprise me if there's condemnation again, including from state media. But we shouldn't be deterred or intimidated by that. We must always put the national interest first. We must always put national security first. If the Chinese government is unhappy with that, they're going to have to deal with it.
KENNY: Senator, just on another issue, are you going to miss the Liberal Party meeting tomorrow over the Voice? Do you believe that Liberal should oppose the Voice, support the Voice, or should the party give its members freedom to support either case?
PATERSON: Chris, if I was there in Canberra with my colleagues on Wednesday I would participate in the internal party debate, but as a shadow minister I am bound by the position that the party adopts and I will accept whatever my colleagues come to and I won't canvass it in the media except to say this; I think we should carefully proceed here. There are constitutional risks involved in the proposal put forward by Mr Albanese. When Voice supporters like Greg Craven and Julian Leeser and Andrew Bragg and others have highlighted in particular the executive leg of the provisions as a risk and also, yesterday at the National Press Club, Julian Leeser was absolutely right to call out the symbolism that's now being inserted in the Constitution. The journey to a Voice to Parliament began when constitutional conservatives tried to head off of at the pass a symbolic preamble because of the constitutional risks that holds. Well the Albanese government is now inserting symbolism into the body of the Constitution, not the preamble, plus the Voice that has teeth. So we need to proceed with real caution here because that alignment would be very great risk to our democracy.
KENNY: Senator, thanks so much for joining us.
PATERSON: Thanks, Chris.
