August 3, 2023
GREG JENNETT: Shadow Minister for Home Affairs James Paterson, welcome back to Afternoon Briefing. Now through your committee, you've taken a broad yet very detailed look at social media and via it, foreign influence, misinformation, censorship. Before we get to the question of bans, you have recommended far more transparency from platforms that are operating here in Australia. What are some of the requirements that would have to be met by them?
JAMES PATERSON: What the committee recognised was that social media platforms have become the new town square in democracies like ours, and therefore the health of those platforms has a big impact on the health of our democracy. And we thought the best way of tackling the foreign state disinformation that's on those platforms is with the principle of transparency. Transparency both about the content on the platform, for example, proactively labelling state affiliated media, which some platforms do and some have done in the past. But also of transparency about how the platforms themselves operate, opening up their books to make sure that if there's coordinated inauthentic behaviour on their platforms, bot campaigns that are trying to game their algorithms, that that's transparent. Transparent about what happens to users’ data, who can access it, what happens with it. Those principles we thought were really important. We think that should be backed by fines and in my view as a last resort, we must keep on the table the possibility of a ban if platforms are non-compliant.
JENNETT: With the major companies and the platforms that are operating in Australia at the moment, what would be your expectation about willing compliance with those measures if they were enforced?
PATERSON: My hope would be that all platforms would be compliant but there were some disturbing signs during the Senate inquiry process which indicates that some platforms may be unwilling or unable to comply. In the case of WeChat, a company that has hundreds of thousands of users in Australia, they felt they didn't have to appear before the inquiry at all. They refused to send witness even via video conference and we weren't able to compel them to appear because WeChat is not headquartered or based in Australia, in fact they have no Australian-based employees and that is one of the recommendations that they should be compelled to have an Australian-based presence. Other companies like TikTok had the pretence of participating in the inquiry but really had no intention of actually assisting us with our inquiry and came along and obfuscated very obviously, and I think anyone who was watching the inquiry saw that.
JENNETT: So that wouldn't augur well for those companies unless they went through a massive business and cultural shift. On present evidence they'd be candidates for outright bans, but bans on what? Only on government-owned devices?
PATERSON: Well, the committee did make a recommendation that the existing ban on TikTok to government devices should be widened to government contractors and operators of systems of national significance as defined by our Critical Infrastructure Act. We also recommended that the ban on TikTok be extended to WeChat on government devices. We've also contemplated potentially wider bans for the community at large if these platforms are repeatedly non-compliant. It is my view that that option needs to remain on the table. Otherwise, I don't think they will comply with those transparency measures. I think they will thumb their nose at it as they have in the past.
JENNETT: And so, taking a company by company or platform by platform specific approach, you held the committee together, but there was a lukewarm attitude to this on the part of the Greens and Labor Senators who took the words of some witnesses that it's akin to whack-a-mole. Do you accept that there's some validity to that? Why not have a more uniform approach?
PATERSON: Well, the committee actually proposed both. We proposed a uniform approach, including with the transparency measures that would apply to all platforms. But we also said you have to recognise when there are specific problems with specific apps that they have to be dealt with. And in fact, that's exactly what the government eventually did do when they banned TikTok from government devices. They recognised that platforms headquartered in authoritarian countries are not the same as platforms headquartered in a Western liberal democracy with the rule of law and therefore some of our policies are going to need to be different for some of those platforms. That's something the government already accepts that's the case by their own actions.
JENNETT: And there are obviously some platforms I assume American-owned, but you can correct me, which you would implicitly trust, because one of the recommendations is that a program of vetting appropriate personnel in trusted social media platforms with relevant clearances could provide a regular point of contact dialogue, I suppose, with government. Which sort of companies are they?
PATERSON: I would say during the inquiry process, there's not a single platform that had a completely clean bill of health. They've all got issues that they have to deal with. But the ones that are headquartered in Western countries typically are victims of authoritarian states trying to flood their platforms with content and weaponise it to game their algorithms. They're not willing participants in it in the same way that, say, TikTok or WeChat might be. And so those companies generally have a more mature relationship with the Australian government. Some of them already have established relationships with our intelligence agencies and some of them have already cooperated to take down some of those coordinated inauthentic account groupings, those bot networks, which are established by authoritarian states in conjunction with our intelligence agencies. So, without singling them out and naming them directly, it is those mostly Silicon Valley headquartered companies that have a more mature relationship with government.
JENNETT: Okay. Well, that sort of brings us, I suppose, to the intersection of Australia and US politics, the most powerful democracy in the world. We see that Donald Trump is again rising as a political force in the countdown to next year's election and continues to use social media to energise his base, whether he's assertions factual or not. He might even become president again. If that's seen as permissible democratic activity in America over the next 18 months or so, does it make it harder to do the very things that you're recommending here in Australia? Are we swimming against the tide?
PATERSON: As you'd expect, Greg, I couldn't comment on an individual candidate or party for an election in another democracy. That's for them to sort out in their own way. But I think the principles of transparency that we outlined are good for any context. They'll serve us well in any context and will help us deal with a range of problems, specifically foreign state disinformation. But I think they'll have some flow on benefits, too, because if users have greater trust in the platforms, because those platforms are open and transparent about the why they operate. They open themselves up to third party researchers to come on their platforms and authenticate what they're doing to combat this, then actually, I think trust in society at large about the information we receive will also rise, and that's good for democratic institutions. One of the challenging things about recent decades is that we've seen declining support in democratic institutions and reduced trust and a lack of shared truth in society, and that's very dangerous.
JENNETT: And where would Australia stand if it implemented some of these recommendations in relation if not to America, then to the rest of Western democracies in general? Would we in fact be leading?
PATERSON: If these recommendations were implemented, they would be world leading, just as Australia led the world in its more conventional combating of foreign interference when we
passed our Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme and our modernised Espionage and Foreign Interference legislation. Those pieces of legislation are now being picked up in the United Kingdom and in Canada. And if we did this, I think we would lead democracies again who would follow our lead.
JENNETT: Alright, well, look, there's a fair bit going on in this space from your recommendations through to the government's current move on disinformation as a piece of legislation, too. We'll stay in touch on these and other matters. James Paterson, thanks again for joining us.
PATERSON: Thank you, Greg.
ENDS
