TRANSCRIPT – eSafety Commissioner, Media Bargaining - Erin Molan Sky
TOPICS: eSafety Commissioner, Media Bargaining, News of the Day
ERIN MOLAN: But first, just over a year ago the Australian Parliament passed the Online Safety Bill, world first legislation and I spoke at the top of the show about my new documentary and the dangers that we and our children, almost more importantly face in the cyber world, the former Communications Minister Paul Fletcher was instrumental in making this happen, standing up to big, powerful tech companies isn't easy. And now that he's in Opposition, I thought he'd more open to sharing more of an insight into what actually went down. I'll also ask about Scott Morrison and the portfolios, maybe he's offended that his work deemed worthy of grabbing by the former Prime Minister. Let's ask him. Paul Fletcher, thank you so much for coming in.
PAUL FLETCHER: Glad to be with you.
ERIN MOLAN: What is your reaction.
PAUL FLETCHER: Well, look, there's been a lot of excitement over the last few days. The Labor Government seems to have jumped on this story about the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison swearing himself into various portfolios. It seems to have suited their political interest to keep talking about this. Look, at the end of the day, you know, Scott's apologised to colleagues who were offended by that and I think that's, you know, he's chosen to handle it that but can I just make this point when it comes to online safety standing up to the big tech giants all of the other important work did in government. Scott was front and centre in that, you know, it was not easy to stare down Facebook and Google when it came to the news media bargaining code. Josh Frydenberg as Treasurer, Scott Morrison as Prime Minister did a fantastic job. I worked with them very closely on that. So look, it's not surprising that the Albanese Labor Government is trying everything they can to, I guess run down the reputation of the former government. That's politics, it's a bit unsavoury, but that's the way it works. But lets not being naive about why they're doing it and…
ERIN MOLAN: People like Joe Hockey, are doing it too, who was on your side of politics?
PAUL FLETCHER: Look, when journalists ask you for a comment on something when the media gets excited about something, who's ever had any fleeting association with politics has been asked for comment on it this week and look I've been clear in my comments if it if Scott had been sworn into my portfolio without me knowing about it, I would have been unhappy about it. To my knowledge, that didn't happen. Look, I welcome the fact that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has apologised to colleagues, but let's keep it in context. He led our country through a very difficult period. The intensity of the workload in particularly in that early part of 2020, I was not one of the key ministers involved in that. There are four or five people who were just working virtually around the clock. Greg Hunt told me that he was getting 1000 texts a day. People have just forgotten what an incredibly tense and stressful period that was at. And the reality is Australia's track record through the pandemic, we didn't make every decision perfectly. Of course not. But the health outcomes better than most countries against which we would benchmark ourselves. The economic outcomes, our economy by December 2021 was bigger than two years before December 2019. Very few other countries can match that.
ERIN MOLAN: Okay, big tech companies they’re not used to governments standing up to them. Australia it before anyone else in the world and you that front and centre they're renowned for allowing bullying threats abuse to go on online did you receive any of that from then did ever feel like you were being bullied in that discussion robust process?
PAUL FLETCHER: When our Liberal-National government came to power in 2013, we did so with a set of commitments about improving online safety. We started with children so we said we were going to establish a Children's eSafety Commissioner and we said that we wanted to have legislative power for this office to deal with the cyber bullying of children. Because going back 10, 12, 15 years ago, parents were about their cyber bullying was becoming a problem we did act, we legislated, we established the Children's eSafety Commissioner in 2015 and we continued to expand its responsibilities. But I'll be clear, the big tech companies were not enthusiastic at every point. They said to us all, this isn't necessary. Your country could become a technological backwater, you really shouldn't be doing this. But we went ahead and the Children's eSafety Commission now the Esafety Commissioner has been world leading many other countries have been very interested in what Australia is doing and already other countries have adopted models that are quite similar. But as we saw with the news media bargaining code, which was another area where we took on big tech again, they were very unhappy and you might remember that in January 2021, it was January or February. Facebook took down a whole series of Facebook pages because they were essentially trying to persuade the Australian Government not to progress with the legislation that we'd committed to.
ERIN MOLAN: So almost… not blackmail, that might be a strong word, but it seems somewhat in that realm
PAUL FLETCHER: It was pretty hard nosed stuff and as a consequence, amongst other things, the Facebook pages of ambulance services of rape, crisis centres of departments in the middle of COVID all got taken down. It did not do Facebook's reputation good at all and we stood up to it and Scott Morrison was front and centre in leading on that, as was Josh Frydenberg. I worked very closely with them. Josh and I had the carriage of those issues and I'm pleased with the outcome that got. Amongst other things its produced tens of millions indeed is estimated be well over $100 million of payments from Facebook and Google to Australian News media businesses including Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media. But a range of smaller businesses as well.
ERIN MOLAN: And that’s for their content?
PAUL FLETCHER: Yes, that’s right. And that money has gone to more journalism. We know journalism has been under huge pressure because of the competition Australian news media businesses have faced from the digital platforms. Now competitions a fine thing, but it needs to be fair competition. And when Google and Facebook are taking content paid for by an Australian news media business and using that to attract eyeballs to their sites very successfully…
ERIN MOLAN: Pay for it!
PAUL FLETCHER: …they ought to be paying for it. Absolutely. That's the principle we stood up for and we legislated, but a lot of pushback.
ERIN MOLAN: I want to ask you this before we have to go and we're running out of time. Are you confident that the former government did in this space led by you and as you said, Frydenberg and Morrison will be carried on by Labor? I haven't heard much talk about this. In fact, anything really.
PAUL FLETCHER: Look, Labor have stayed very silent on this. They did support our legislation when it went through in 2021.
ERIN MOLAN: And I spoke to Anthony Albanese, rang him at the time we'd spoken and I rang him and asked to support and he said he would.
PAUL FLETCHER: But during election campaign we committed additional measures $23 million for an eSafety Schools Package so that schools around the country, there are 10,000 schools around the country, so that they would all know if your students have a problem here's the place to go. We also committed $16 million to support eSafety to deal with technology facilitated abuse. Sadly When a woman leaves a violent relationship, very often there is technology facilitated abuse such as messages or other things where the intimidation and harassment continues. So we wanted to resource these eSafety to deal with that. We have heard very little from Labor as to whether they will support. I call on them to support that. This is so important. It should be above politics.
ERIN MOLAN: Absolutely thank you again for the work that you did. It was incredible Paul Fletcher, thank you so much for your time.
PAUL FLETCHER: Thanks Erin
