STEPHEN CENATIEMPO:
Time to talk federal politics with the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner, Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning.
ANDREW LEIGH:
Good morning, Stephen, great to be with you.
CENATIEMPO:
Seventy-six new bills before both chambers of parliament this week. How many are you repealing?
LEIGH:
We’ve got a big legislative agenda, there’s a lot to be done, and certainly the work of getting inflation under control, dealing with the indexation of HECS, making sure that we’ve got the social media ban for under 16s that you mentioned there, Stephen, all of that is important legislative agenda. I think it’s doing what the Australian people want us to do, of tackling cost of living and ensuring that we create more jobs, there’s a million created since we came to office.
CENATIEMPO:
Well, yeah, most of them are public service, so let’s be honest about that –
LEIGH:
No...
CENATIEMPO:
But when it comes to that social media bill, it’s not what most parents want.
LEIGH:
Well, first of all, Stephen, you’re wrong about jobs, most of those jobs have been created in the private sector.
CENATIEMPO:
Yeah. Well, government didn’t – you didn’t – government didn’t create a single one of them.
LEIGH:
What we’ve done is created the environment in which we’ve been able to see flourishing job growth, the best job growth in a term of any government in Australian history. It’s an extraordinary story for the Australian people; I think collectively we should be really proud of it. We’ve got inflation now back inside the target band, down from 6 point something when we came into office, and we’re working hard to bring costs down to households.
Now on the social media ban, this is an issue that is rampant, whenever I talk to other parents on the sidelines of sporting games, the frustration is that kids are spending too much time on devices and not enough time with their mates. So, the legislation will have carve‑outs for apps that have to do with health or education, the Google Classroom, or the Headspace app, that will be outside the scope. Its penalties apply for platforms, not for parents or students, and it’s setting a norm across the community.
CENATIEMPO:
Do you not find it strange that the legislation doesn’t mention parents once?
LEIGH:
So, I think you’ve come to a really important point there, Stephen. This is not about saying that there is a way through if you badger your parents enough to get to undermine it. This is saying that there is a community standard. And that’s what we do with alcohol. So, we don’t say with alcohol that you can’t drink until you’re 18 except if your parents say you can. We have an overall limit of 18. And another analogy with alcohol; with alcohol we have seen kids who drink before they turn 18, and that doesn’t lead us to say, ‘Well, this law’s hopeless, let’s chuck it out’. It sets a community standard in which we expect that kids will not begin drinking alcohol until they turn 18.
CENATIEMPO:
Yeah, that’s fine, but Andrew –
LEIGH:
And in the same way –
CENATIEMPO:
– you’re missing the point of what I’m saying, is that you’ve got a bill here that you say is to protect children and parents are not mentioned once. You’re trying to take the power. And as I’ve discussed with you before, and you seemed – and this is not just you, because you’re like most of your colleagues, you refuse to listen to the advice of experts who say there is a way to put the power in the hands of parents so they can protect their kids online from all of the nefarious things that are online, not just social media platforms. This is an example of you guys doing something because you don’t really understand the problem, but you just want to be seen to be doing something. Let’s be honest about what’s really happening here.
LEIGH:
Stephen, I can promise you I’ve spent a lot more time talking to experts on this one than most members of the parliament. I’ve been looking into this issue for a number of years now. I’m deeply concerned about the deterioration in youth mental health, about some of the severe problems we’re seeing.
CENATIEMPO:
Okay, so –
LEIGH:
We’re seeing a rise in –
CENATIEMPO:
– what does this bill do to prevent kids’ access to pornography online?
LEIGH:
So we know that a lot of kids are seeing pornography unintentionally, and that some of that pornography is coming through social media.
CENATIEMPO:
Some, but not all.
LEIGH:
The average age at which children encounter online pornography is 13. Increasingly this pornography is not the dirty magazines that previous generations would have seen, but is explicit, violent imagery.
CENATIEMPO:
Exactly. And this bill does nothing to address that.
LEIGH:
No, this bill will address the way in which kids access social media, which is one way in which pornography comes into kids’ lives. I’m not pretending it deals with every particular ill on the internet. I’m not pretending it’s going to have 100 per cent enforcement. But it is an important reform, and the time has come for putting a minimum age on social media.
CENATIEMPO:
So why not –
LEIGH:
It has good support across the community, it has broad support across the parliament, and it will pass the parliament –
CENATIEMPO:
Yeah, I know it’s going to pass the parliament, because most of you don’t understand what you’re doing, and won’t listen to people that can actually tell you, because as I’ve tried to explain to you before, and I’ve explained to several other members of parliament, privately, on air, off air, is that there is a way to actually allow parents the ability to restrict what their kids do on their devices, not just on social media but right across the board, and it’s something that the parliament actually has access to, ‘cause you can’t access things on your parliamentary phone, but unfortunately parents don’t have access to that same level of protection, and all you would need to do is change the ACCC regulations to allow that. ‘But no, we need to make a big show about we’re going to take on the bully social media platforms, so it looks like we’re doing something’.
LEIGH:
Stephen, I know you have an unusual solution, but your –
CENATIEMPO:
It’s not an unusual solution.
LEIGH:
[Indistinct].
CENATIEMPO:
It’s not unusual. It’s what’s being done everywhere else in the world.
LEIGH:
– no, that’s not the case. There’s a range of age assurance technology, and that’s why there will be a one‑year phase‑in in order to look at how age assurance operates. There’s a range of providers of different age assurance technologies, it may be that different platforms have different aged assurance systems. This will not require platforms to hold personal ID, we’re being very clear about the privacy protections that surround that. But there will be –
CENATIEMPO:
Well, the sham senate inquiry actually said otherwise yesterday.
LEIGH:
I haven’t seen the details of the senate inquiry you’re talking about. What I’ve been looking at is the evidence behind the bill and the evidence behind age verification technologies. There’s a range of approaches there. What platforms will need to do in order to escape the penalties that are in the bill is to ensure they have an appropriate age verification system in place. Various technologies exist, and the platforms will have a year to put those in place from when the bill takes effect.
CENATIEMPO:
Well, hopefully in that year you and your colleagues on both sides of the house wake up to yourselves on this issue.
I want to talk about a speech you made about building housing opportunity. This was, I guess, for lack of a better way of putting it, in response to Bill Shorten’s valedictory speech. Talk to us about what you were getting at here.
LEIGH:
Well, Bill had just given a fantastic valedictory speech, so I figure, if you’re going to stand in the parliament straight after that, you’ve got to acknowledge one of the most remarkable parliamentarians that we’ve had, and somebody who I’m really pleased to call a mate, and somebody who’s going to be a great backer of Canberra. He talked about Canberra and about his role as Vice‑Chancellor at the University of Canberra.
CENATIEMPO:
I don’t know how he’s going to afford to buy a house here, but we’ll worry about that next. Anyway, moving right along.
LEIGH:
But the issue of housing affordability is one that’s been front and centre for me and for the Labor Party, and it’s really pleasing now that the Greens have finally come to their senses and are backing Build to Rent and Help to Buy. Build to Rent will allow more affordable homes through providing tax incentives to developers that build a building and then rent the entire thing. Help to Buy is a shared equity scheme that allows more people to break into the housing market who can’t afford a deposit the way house prices are right now.
CENATIEMPO:
Let’s talk about that for a moment, ‘cause the Build to Rent, I think is a great idea, and you know, I’m in favour of it, if it’s going to help larger developers do that, so be it. But the shared equity scheme, do you think people understand the fact that that shared equity is going to be a problem for them at the back end? So if you want to – so it’s 40 per cent, the government owns 40 per cent of your house, when you go to sell it they own 40 per cent of the equity you have in it at the improved and appreciated value, which puts you even further behind the 8 ball if you need to get into another house some time down the track.
LEIGH:
No, I think people are going into it with their eyes open, that’s certainly been the experience in all the states that it’s been operating. Western Australia’s KeyStart program is the longest running of these, it’s operated under Labor and Liberal governments, and certainly you haven’t had the confusion issue that you talk about, because people are educated about what’s going on before they sign up to the deal. Other states have put a kind of to Help to Buy Scheme in place, but we don’t have a national scheme yet, and so this is what we’ll have by the end of the week when it passes the parliament.
CENATIEMPO:
Andrew, I’d love to talk to you about a whole bunch of issues, but we’ll talk to you in a couple of weeks’ time.
LEIGH:
Hot week, hot conversation. Good to chat, Stephen.
CENATIEMPO:
All the best. Thanks, Andrew. Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, and Treasury and the Member for Fenner.