SARAH MACDONALD:
Well Australia has a border, but the internet does not. We have fake accounts, we have violent videos, we have fake voice messages, disinformation, lies, misinformation, and foreign actors whipping up social upheaval. The eSafety Commissioner demanded X take down a video of the stabbing of the Sydney cleric Mar Mari Emmanuel last week and certain posts containing public comments on the attack. Elon Musk says he's moved to comply but he's going to challenge this as the comments don't violate the X rules on violent speech. Elon Musk said, ‘the Australian censorship commissar is demanding global content bans!’ Now in terms of this we've had Labor Senator Murray Watt saying he's had a gut full of narcissistic billionaires who think they're above the law. But are they above the law of certain countries? Federal Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones is in charge of high‑level negotiations with social media companies, and he says he will force social media companies to answer to the government.
Stephen Jones joins me now on ABC Radio Sydney. Good morning.
STEPHEN JONES:
Hey, good morning. Good to be with you.
MACDONALD:
Can you tell me what X has taken down and what it hasn't?
JONES:
Well at the moment they're just spooning and being indignant to the lawful request of the eSafety Commissioner and that's not good enough. You know, whether it's X, whether it's Meta, Facebook, they have to understand that they're not a sovereign state. It really does strike me, and while the focus is on Elon Musk's ridiculous and petulant responses over the weekend, he's not alone. We have similar sorts of behaviour in Meta as well. I mean Meta is more determined to take journalists off its platforms than it is criminals. None of this is tenable. I think we've come to a point in time where we say to social media, ‘You're not above the law. You're not a sovereign state. You operate in our country. You play by our laws’.
MACDONALD:
He may be ridiculous and petulant as you say but at least he's being open about it, whereas Meta and other sites are saying, ‘Oh yes, we're doing what we can’ and then don't seem to do much.
JONES:
Well I think you've hit the nail on the head. Meta makes millions and millions and millions of dollars in Australia, and around the world, advertising criminal content. It's just not right. It's immoral that they can be promoting criminal scams, Australians losing billions of dollars to these scams and seemingly the social media platforms are doing nothing to pull the stuff down, yet they can move pretty quickly to remove journalistic content from their platforms when it suits them. So whether it's Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, there's a moment of reckoning coming. You are not above the law.
MACDONALD:
Right. Well X are saying the eSafety Commissioner doesn't have that authority to dictate what content the people can see around the world and that goes against the principles of a free and open internet and threatens free speech. So do we have the authority? Will you really see Elon Musk perhaps and Mark Zuckerberg in court?
JONES:
I'm going to stand to the defence of Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner. She is a world class regulator with decades of experience in this area, and she's backed up by laws which empower her to act in the public interest and to ensure that our online environments are safe from this sort of offensive and harmful content. She's acted within the law. Of course Elon Musk, like anybody else, is entitled to test that in the court but, you know, frankly the question for Elon Musk really here is why is it more important for him to defend this, you know, ridiculous idea that he's got that it is to keep his environment safe? Is his value proposition to Australia and the rest of the world, ‘Come to Twitter. It's a place where you can be abused, where you can, you know, engage in a murder's peep show and, you know, you can expose yourself to scams and criminal activity’? Is that really the value proposition you're taking to the Australian people? Because that's what it sounds like at the moment.
MACDONALD:
You're on ABC Radio Sydney. I'm getting texts saying, ‘I deleted X recently. I won't support a lawless platform that has no regard for people's well‑being’. Greg says, ‘Bring on the regulation of social media’. Stephen Jones is with me on ABC Radio Sydney. He's the Federal Assistant Treasurer. I mean this is just tough talk, isn't it? Can we actually do anything when Meta is not based in Australia, X is not based in Australia and the Internet has no boundaries, has no country, it goes everywhere?
JONES:
Well there's 3 jobs of work that we've got going on at the moment. Firstly, in my area I'm working, as you know, on the Media Bargaining Code. This is about ensuring that platforms pay for the content that they use when it's produced by journalists. We think that's an important principle of democracy. In addition to that I'm working with Michelle Rowland on the scams and the financial crimes that are being published online. We'll have a world leading program of protection in place by the end of the year. An important job of work. So yes, in that second job of work. Thirdly, we've got the eSafety Commissioner and the law which empowers them and if we need to strengthen those laws we will. We've got a review going on at the moment to ensure that they are fit for purpose. But whether it's—
MACDONALD:
But how will it work if the laws are different here to the rest of the world?
JONES:
Yeah, well actually this is an important – this is an interesting point. The rest of the world is moving as well.
MACDONALD:
It's starting to, yeah.
JONES:
I was up in the UK last month and I was meeting with all the Home Affairs and my Consumer Affair equivalent Ministers and they were of one voice when they resolved that the status quo is not good enough, that we have to work as an international community to ensure that social media platforms which operate across nation‑states abide by the laws within nation‑states. We do it with taxation law. We do it with other forms of law. And social media platforms, yeah, they're new in the sense that they've been around for less than 20 years, but it's not like we haven't tackled these sorts of problems with multinational operators in the past. We have and we will.
MACDONALD:
So if we have – I mean obviously, and I know Julie Inman Grant told me on ABC Radio Sydney last week that she's meeting with other people who have similar positions, in Europe they're trying to act on this too. But can we have before international agreement a law in Australia that sets a kind of wall around us that people just can't get around with these social media companies?
JONES:
Yes, and they will. We'll ensure that we do whatever's within our power to keep our platforms safe and to keep Australians safe from scammers, from criminal activity and the sort of value‑free zone that places like Twitter have become. I mean decency is not yet dead and if they want to operate in Australia then they've got to operate by the laws of Australia, and I don't think any Australian would think that that was too much to ask.
MACDONALD:
And if they don't would you ban them? Say like China does?
JONES:
We'll look at all of the enforcement options that are available to us. But the much better option here, frankly, I mean I use Twitter, and thousands and thousands of Australians do, and I use Meta's platforms as well. We don't want to ban them. We just want to operate by the rules of decency and the rules that the Australian people have said how we expect any social media platform to operate here in Australia.
MACDONALD:
Well if he's challenging you in court now will that be under the laws we have now or the future laws?
JONES:
Of course it'll be under the laws he has now if he's taking issue with the direction that he's been given by the eSafety Commissioner. That'd be a challenge under the existing laws. And if our existing laws don't give the sufficient power to the regulator as necessary then we'll adjust them, because we are resolute in our determination to ensure that we bring decency and safety to these social media platforms. Just in the area that I deal with alone, in scams, $3 billion a year was lost to scams in the previous 12 months. That's $3 billion at the time of a cost‑of‑living crisis that's being swept overseas. That's bad enough. But the social media platforms are actually making money out of it because they make money out of the advertising which promotes this criminal activity.
MACDONALD:
It seems, Stephen Jones, you have bipartisanship now, more agreement from Peter Dutton on this so could we act faster for stronger regulation?
JONES:
Look, I certainly hope so and Peter Dutton will be tested on whether he's genuine about that. You know, they've been for the last 12 months saying they're going to block any attempts to move in this area. The challenge to Peter Dutton is to ensure that he supports the sort of robust laws that are going to be necessary to keep Australians safe.
MACDONALD:
Would you perhaps stop spending government money on social media, advertising? Would that have an impact do you think?
JONES:
Again, we'll look at the options that are available to us, but the far better approach is that the captains of Meta, the captains of Twitter and these other social media platforms read the room and understand that the world's changed and these places can't be a lawless environment.
MACDONALD:
Stephen Jones is with me, the Federal Assistant Treasurer on ABC Radio Sydney. A final question before you go. The New South Wales Treasurer Daniel Mookhey was on Breakfast with Angela Catterns this morning, very worried about the financial situation in New South Wales.
[Excerpt]
DANIEL MOOKHEY:
Just to put this into some proportion, $11.9 billion is what we think we will lose now as a result of the Commonwealth Grants Commission's GST carve up. That is the equivalent of about 19,000 healthcare workers, that's 16,000 teachers, and to put this in really stark relief, New South Wales has lost more revenue from the Commonwealth Grants Commission than we did during COVID‑19.
[End of excerpt]
MACDONALD:
You're a New South Wales MP and the Federal Assistant Treasurer, can the federal government help here?
JONES:
Look, we're doing lots of things to work in partnership with the New South Wales government. I don't dispute the fact that the New South Wales government, other governments around the country and the federal government are doing all we can to try and meet all the demands within, you know, really constrained budgetary environments. But in the area of health, you know, we're negotiating with New South Wales and other states around a new health and hospitals agreement. We're in discussions around the NDIS. We've provided a record new injection into housing funding, $2 billion last year alone above and beyond what they were expecting. So there were a lot of fund transfers to New South Wales and other States and yes, the GST is one of them, but we want to work cooperatively with the states and that's the spirit in which Jim Chalmers has entered into the negotiations around these state/federal relations. As Mr Mookhey himself has said, the Commonwealth Grants Commission determines the distribution of funds in accordance with the formula. There's nothing new in that. This is the operation of the allocation formula. We have lots of conversations with New South Wales and other states about all of these funding arrangements. I think Mr Mookhey is doing a good job in a tough environment.
MACDONALD:
Thanks for your time this morning.
JONES:
Good on you.