March 14, 2024
TOM CONNELL: Joining me live is shadow Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister James Paterson, thanks for your time. What do you make of this and what might play out in Australia? Is this something we should keep a close eye on and possibly follow suit on?
JAMES PATERSON: TikTok is a national security threat for Australia for the same reason it's national security threat to the United States. Number one, they abuse the data of their users. And number two, they use the app to interfere in our democracy by pumping it full of disinformation and by censoring things which are critical of the Chinese Communist Party. So for the same reasons that the House of Representatives has now taken action, the Australian government must take action. This has been clear for some time now, and there should be no further excuses for the inaction of the Albanese government. They should have already sent drafting instructions to the Department of Home Affairs to get them to prepare equivalent legislation for Australia. Because what this legislation does is it severs the relationship between TikTok and its Chinese company, ByteDance, and therefore breaks the relationship, the nexus, between the Chinese Communist Party and what has become the most dominant source of news and information in the world for young people.
CONNELL: So is that the official coalition policy. What's happening here though. So either that severing as you call it happens or it's just banned in Australia.
PATERSON: Well, I'm calling on the Albanese government to make sure that Australia is not left behind. Because if the United States solve this, solves this problem for themselves, but Australia is not included in it, then the Chinese Communist Party will continue to have unregulated access to millions of devices of young Australians to influence their views about the world, to abuse their data in ways that we know has transparently happened in the past. And that's not a national security threat we should tolerate at any time, but particularly at a time of heighten strategic competition.
CONNELL: When you say solved though, if this plays out in terms of the US enacts it and then TikTok says no thanks. And then it's banned in the US. Is that solving it in your view. Should we do the same?
PATERSON: Well, that would be on TikTok and on its parent company, ByteDance, and its ultimate controller, the Chinese Communist Party. They have a pathway here to remain active in the United States, just as if we passed this legislation they would have a pathway to remain active in Australia. And I'm not sure that the any company, any rational company, should walk away from a market of 170 million Americans or tens of millions of Australians.
CONNELL: Would you be willing for that to happen in Australia if that's the case?
PATERSON: Well, the ball is in TikTok’s court here, Tom. It's up to them. Either they operate rationally, like any business would, and they sell this highly profitable business at an enormously high price and do very well out of it. Or they choose to allow their company to be banned because they disregard the law of the United States and fail to comply with it. Now, if you are acting as a rational commercial actor, it's very clear what choice you'd make. If you are acting as a sophisticated authoritarian state, you might make a different choice, but that will be a very revealing choice.
CONNELL: The Senate still has to approve it in the US , we'll see how that plays out. We've got reports that we have Palestinians who have fled Gaza. They were granted temporary visas to come to Australia, but it's believed at least to have been stopped on the way back. What do you make of this?
PATERSON: Well, Tom, when the Coalition first raised concerns about the speedy way in which those visas were granted, how we could possibly have conducted adequate security checks, the government said that we were fear mongering. Well, it turns out maybe we weren't. Maybe they hadn't done the necessary checks. But the normal way of doing these things, Tom, is you do a security check on someone before their visa was granted, not afterwards. So they have to front up today. The Minister for Home Affairs should front up today and explain exactly why these visas were granted in the first place, and why that have now been rescinded. Have they actually finally done their homework and discovered that some of those people are supporters of Hamas? Your colleague Sharri Markson, has identified at least one visa grantee from Gaza who's already in Australia, celebrated the attacks of 7th October on social media.
CONNELL: So, fair enough to call in the Minister to explain. One of the initial reports, though, is that, the visa was revoked because of a fear they would stay in Australia. That's different to being a security threat, isn't it? So does that imply the security aspect? There's no one within the Department or the government saying there's an issue with the security aspect. It's another condition?
PATERSON: Well Tom, no one from the government has said anything publicly to explain this at all yet, so we just don't know. But if the government has only just discovered the possibility that people fleeing a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation on a tourist visa might want to stay in Australia when they get here, I have to tell them it should have been fairly obvious well before now that that would be the case. In fact, it's my expectation that almost all of those people would seek to stay in Australia once they get to Australia, and it would be very difficult for Australia to remove any of those people for obvious reasons.
CONNELL: That's one report, obviously. We'll see what the Minister has to say. Just finally and briefly on this. Should you have more criticism of the department?, I mean, any government of the day, it's not a minister sitting through there and being able to do the checks. They rely on departments don't they?
PATERSON: Tom we have a principle of ministerial accountability in our democracy. And ministers have to take responsibility for their departments. And we know in the case of the bungling of the handling of the release of 149 criminal foreign detainees in to our community that at many steps along the way, it was decisions made by ministers or failure to make decisions by ministers that has exacerbated or caused many of these problems. So ultimately, the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Immigration must take responsibility for their shockingly incompetent handling. Maybe Tom if there had only been one stuff up, maybe if there had only been two stuff ups, they could say that's just the department. But there's been stuff up, after stuff up, after stuff up. And it is not plausible that it is only the department at fault. It's very clear that it's the Albanese government that's also at fault here.
CONNELL: James Paterson appreciate your time, thank you.
ENDS
