August 2, 2023
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JAMES PATERSON: Good morning. Australia led the world in combatting traditional forms of foreign interference and espionage, and many of our allies and friends around the world, including the United Kingdom, Canada and others, have followed our lead. Now it's time for Australia to lead again. We can lead on the growing, pernicious threat of cyber-enabled foreign interference that's taking place on our social media platforms, and this is the blueprint for action to do so. It's a 200-page, comprehensive, bipartisan report with 17 recommendations for change that the government can pick up and implement today. And if they do so, they'll be making Australia a much harder target for the very serious foreign interference risks that we all face. It tackles both the problems posed by authoritarian headquartered social media platforms like TikTok and WeChat and Western headquartered social media platforms being weaponised by the actions of authoritarian governments, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. I really hope the government is able to approach this report in the way that the committee approached it, which is in a bipartisan way because we need action, and we need it now to protect Australians and our democracy.
QUESTION: So, this is from a legislative perspective. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people in Australia who are on TikTok and WeChat. Would you be encouraging those people to get off those platforms?
PATERSON: I'm not on TikTok, I'm not on WeChat, and the reason is it would represent an unacceptable espionage and data security risk to me as a parliamentarian. And that's why the government has banned TikTok from all devices of government users and that's why the
committee has recommended they do so for WeChat as well, because it represents such a serious risk to those users. I'd also be thinking very carefully if I was a journalist, given that TikTok has spied on journalists, if I was a human rights activist, if I was a researcher or an academic or anyone else who is possibly of interest to the Chinese Communist Party. But even if I didn't fall under any of those categories, I'd be worried about the risk in aggregate to all of society when behavioural insights can be derived by collecting the data of millions of people en masse, and that can be weaponised against us as a country. So, I really would urge Australians to think very carefully about whether or not you want to be on these apps, whether or not there are better and safer alternatives for you.
QUESTION: One of the recommendations from this report is that if the US forces TikTok to divest from ByteDance that we should do the same. You talk about Australia potentially being a leader in this space. Why wait for the US and how is that leadership?
PATERSON: One of the pieces of evidence that was clear in the committee is that there is no easy technical solution to this problem. There's no mitigation that you can put in place to be certain that our data is going to be safe on these apps because they collect so much data and because there's no way that it can't be accessed back in China. So, we're all at that risk. The reality is the United States is a little bit further down the road on us on that question, on divesting TikTok from its parent company, ByteDance. And I think it's quite possible that action will be taken on that quite soon. If they're going to do so, we shouldn't wait. We shouldn't be left behind. We should jump on that bandwagon and act soon, because that does offer a potentially tangible protection for Australians.
QUESTION: Why tie us to what the US is doing? Do they have information that we don't know? Is that the reason?
PATERSON: No. We have the same access to information that they do. We understand the same risks that they do. They're just a bit further down the road in thinking about this problem and getting advice on this problem and drafting solutions for this problem. And I suspect they will take action in the coming months. If they don't, of course, it is available to Australia to act on our own, to lead again, as we have on these issues. And many of the other recommendations in this report would be world leading if we implemented them. The 11 transparency requirements that we proposed to impose on social media platforms that would apply to all of them would be world leading. And if those are not adhered to the companies would first be fined, and as a last resort, the Minister for Home Affairs have the power to ban them – again, a world leading power if it was implemented by this government.
QUESTION: On those bans, the government makes clear in the remarks at the end of the report that it's not really keen on a blanket ban, says they are a whack-a-mole the solution. You obviously don't agree with that?
PATERSON: I think it's really important that we keep that option on the table, because if we don't, then social media platforms won't be motivated to comply with the other more reasonable requests that we're making. They have to understand there are serious
consequences for them for non-compliance. And at the moment, they've demonstrated, including during this inquiry, that they don't regard Australian law, Australian oversight of their companies as something that they have to really worry about at all. WeChat didn't even bother showing up to the parliamentary inquiry and TikTok did, but in a totally perfunctory way and didn't really engage in an honest and open and transparent way with the committee. I think that's partly because they don't think the threat to their business model is serious and that's why bans have to be on the table as a last resort.
QUESTION: Thank you so much.
PATERSON: Thanks everyone.
ENDS
