DAVID SPEERS, HOST: Anika Wells, welcome to the program.

MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS ANIKA WELLS: Good morning, David.

SPEERS: So, Angus Taylor says this bill would give you unfettered powers. Are there any limits on what you could potentially ban people from seeing online?

WELLS: Yes. And this is two years’ worth of consultation in the making to offer an exposure draft for further consultation, which we did on Tuesday this week, standing alongside national leading organisations like The Butterfly Foundation, like Headspace, like Teach Us Consent, like Project Rockit, people who work with children and are worried about the wellbeing and health of our children, who want us to legislate a Digital Duty of Care. This is about giving you back power over your feed, about keeping illegal content off the internet, and about keeping our children safe from these psychosocial harms that are erupting daily online.

SPEERS: But when you look at the bill, it says, the minister may, by legislative instrument, determine material or conduct, or accommodation of material and conduct, that the minister is satisfied may cause serious harm. It doesn’t define that harm. So, what is the limit on what you might be able to define as harm?

WELLS: Well, there’s three limits. Firstly, I must consult with the eSafety Commissioner. Secondly, when I make the rule, any member or senator can move a disallowance motion in the House or the Senate. I have 15 days to convince that member or senator, and if I don’t, it goes to a vote on the floor and majority wins. So, there’s a number of limits there. The rule making power exists elsewhere in the Online Safety Act. We were surprised at the eruption of the Coalition here because, until this modern iteration of the Coalition, they have been proud of their record on online safety. They brought in the Online Safety Act. Paul Fletcher was the minister that drafted these rules when he legislated the Act in 2021. But ultimately, David, I’d say this, the intent of that rule making power is about acting with urgency. On 29 December, Grok started allowing users to nudify photos. Children, teens, it erupted online. People were horrified. People said, someone needs to do something about this. This rule making power would have allowed the eSafety Commissioner and I to declare nudifying photos of children as a new serious harm. The Parliament would have had the ability to disallow that. We think this is a sensible measure to try and deal with these emerging harms that are coming online every single day. And when it happens to your child and you’re the parent, you want the Government to act as swiftly as possible.

Now, if the Coalition has a different way of meeting that intent of dealing with urgency to address new serious harms, I’d love to hear it. But I haven’t had so much as a phone call from the Shadow Communications Minister on the exposure draft. I understand a briefing paper was circulated amongst the Coalition. I didn’t receive a letter iterating their concerns, seeking a meeting to talk about what would be the differences required for them to support the bill. Instead, they convened a special party room meeting to reject an exposure draft, and then they convened a press conference to make sure you all knew about it. It’s an extraordinary series of decisions. They are playing Yahtzee with kettlebells on this. And I invite them to reconsider. We haven’t even introduced the bill to the Parliament yet. But we really do want this to be supported by all parliamentarians.

SPEERS: Nonetheless, their concern is clearly this ministerial power. Would you be willing to make a concession here and say Parliament will decide on any new areas of harm, rather than the minister alone?

WELLS: I would be pleased to consider any constructive ways we can meet the intent around dealing with urgency around new and emerging serious harms and I welcome –

SPEERS: [Talks over] Would that be a constructive way? Would that be – would that be a change you’re willing to make?

WELLS: Yes, but like said, I haven’t had so much as a phone call or a word from the Shadow with any suggestions. I just had an outright rejection of an exposure draft communicated by a press conference by the Leader of the Opposition. It’s extraordinary.

SPEERS: Okay, but you’ve just confirmed that, yes, that is a change you’re willing to make, that Parliament decides on new areas of harm?

WELLS: I would be prepared to work with the Coalition on the wording to make that work, that meets the urgency requirement of the intent of that measure.

SPEERS: Okay. Look, you’ve also been raising concerns lately about misinformation and disinformation online, that is making the job of government more difficult. Does this bill have anything to do with those concerns?

WELLS: No, I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time here, David. You can ask any parliamentarian about how the sort of structural decline in public trust, in public institutions, has impacted how we interact with our constituents. And that is something that we all need to engage in. This is something quite different. This is about giving you choice back over your feed. This is about trying to get rid of the illegal content that is being beamed into your eyeballs against your will. And this is about keeping children more safe online than they have been, as we get more and more evidence around the psychosocial harms that they are experiencing – like AI chatbots telling girls how to subsist on only 600 calories a day, like grooming occurring on Roblox, a gaming platform that many, many Australian children use. This is about trying to give Australian parents confidence that we are doing everything we can to make it safer online for their children. And like I said, until the modern iteration of the Coalition, online safety had been something that had been pretty bipartisan, and we were proud of that.

SPEERS: But can you see why some people are concerned that this is what you’re trying to do? The Government in its last term tried to tackle mis- and disinformation and then abandoned the bill, and now you’re still talking about your concerns around mis- and disinformation. Can you see why some might fear that’s what you’re trying to do through this bill?

WELLS: The heart of the Digital Duty of Care is putting the onus on big tech platforms to take responsibility for the harm they are doing to Australians. The heart of the Digital Duty of Care is making big tech identify where there is the risks on their platform and mitigating against those risks. That is the heart of the Digital Duty of Care. It’s about the systems, functions and features. It is not about content.

SPEERS: Well, it does refer to content, the draft bill, to be clear. It specifically says, the platforms have to address the harm posed by their services, including the content that gives rise to those risks. So, just to be clear, you won’t return to mis- and disinformation.

WELLS: [Talk over] That’s right. For children. For children.

SPEERS: Yeah. You won’t return to trying to stop mis- and disinformation online?

WELLS: I view that policy question that is before all of us as something entirely separate to the Digital Duty of Care, which is about making big tech accountable for the harms they are doing to Australians. The six psychosocial harms, that includes content for children, is a different test than the test we are proposing for Australian adults. The test for Australian adults is about illegal content. What is illegal already exists in Australian criminal law.

SPEERS: Okay, will you return, though, to trying to tackle that separate issue of mis- and disinformation?

WELLS: At the moment, I am highly focused on introducing the Digital Duty of Care to the Parliament.

SPEERS: At the moment.

WELLS: And working with any parliamentarian who wants to work constructively with me to get a Digital Duty of Care installed as a basic safety standard for an industry that, until this point, has gone totally unregulated. It is not unreasonable for us to deliver basic safety standards, like we have for cars or food or toys, to an industry that is seeking to make money off Australians.

SPEERS: But you might come back to mis- and disinformation in the future?

WELLS: That’s not what I’m saying.

SPEERS: Well, will you?

WELLS: It’s not part of the agenda that I need to deliver this term. I am focused on delivering the Digital Duty of Care.

SPEERS: Alright. So, maybe beyond the next election, it might be something you come back to?

WELLS: That’s a hypothetical, David.

SPEERS: Okay.

WELLS: And I tell you what, I’m up to pussy’s bow delivering all the other parts of the portfolio. We just passed news media incentive, the gambling reforms, eight bills last fortnight.

This week, we’ve passed the social media minimum age laws, and we’ve introduced the exposure draft for the Digital Duty of Care. I note in that grab you had from the Leader of the Opposition, off the top, that he said he wanted me to focus on improving the social media minimum age laws, and that that’s what they had supported. On Thursday, the Coalition voted against the strengthening of the social media minimum age laws. Again, that is extraordinary. And I think the modern iteration of the Coalition should put parents before platforms here, rather than just rattling off the talking points of big tech, like Angus Taylor has been doing this week.

SPEERS: I should point out, if people can hear the noise outside your office where you’re joining us from. I understand it’s not a protest, it’s a festival, a local festival going on.

WELLS: It’s Nundah Festival.

SPEERS: There you go.

WELLS: It’s Nundah Festival.

SPEERS: Just to let people know.

WELLS: [Talks over] And I’m- I have been out and I will go back out.

SPEERS: Look, just coming back to some of the Greens’ concerns around the Digital Duty of Care bill, the PM says if people want to doomscroll on social media, that’s fine. The Greens are saying, well, no, it’s not. The problem is the addictive nature of social media, the auto play. Is there something you’re willing to do to put more friction in the system to tackle this problem of doomscrolling and addiction of social media?

WELLS: Well, I think we can all agree that no one is doomscrolling because they love the sensation of the thumb against the glass for hours on end. They’re doing it because you are receiving personalised, curated content designed to keep your eyeballs on that screen for as long as possible so that platform can sell your attention for advertising revenue. We believe, by giving every Australian the option of what you choose as your default primary feed, be that the algorithm, be that your following feed, where it’s just your friends, the local businesses that you choose to follow, we are giving you the option of not doomscrolling if you want to try and just follow your feed, not follow- not doomscroll for hours on end. I will say it is your choice, and people make those choices for valid reasons. If you are breastfeeding twins at 3am, for example, it’s very comforting to have something to keep you company, if you’re stuck there for 90 minutes. That’s your choice as an adult.

SPEERS: Okay.

WELLS: We’re not here to police that. But we do want Australians to have a choice. And at the moment, we’re all subject to a private ranking system that you did not choose and you cannot inspect. And that’s what we’re trying to fix here.

SPEERS: The other Greens concern is the penalties in this bill. At the moment, I think it’s – what is it? Just over $100 million for breaches. It sounds like a lot, but not to these companies.

WELLS: [Talks over] Yes.

SPEERS: Why not fine them a percentage of their global revenue in the way Europe does under its Digital Services Act?

WELLS: That’s right. And Meta just unblushingly paid US$18 billion in a settlement a few weeks ago. The question of fines, we drafted around Australian consumer law. I think the Greens and I agree on the fact that this is about changing the behaviour of big tech, and ultimately this is about the social licence, and no particular figure that we mandate in Australia is going to be enough for the world’s richest companies. It’s got to be about what incentivises the change in behaviour and what gives them back the social licence that they are losing in Australia.

SPEERS: So, why not a percentage of their global revenues? They’d pay attention to that.

WELLS: They would, but I’m not convinced it would change their behaviour, given, like you say, that’s already in existence in the EU, they’ve already just paid US$18 billion. I will work constructively with the Greens. Like I said, we really would like the whole of the Parliament to support these laws.

SPEERS: Just a couple of other issues. Overnight, we just mentioned the chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, has published an essay. He’s calling for a slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence and greater safety controls. He has been backed in this morning by Sam Altman from OpenAI, Elon Musk as well. Does the Australian Government want to see a slowdown in the pace of AI development?

WELLS: Well, AGI is here, isn’t it? And our principles we operator around as the Australian Government is we want to capture the benefits of AI, we want to spread those, and we want to keep Australians safe. My part as the Comms Minister is to keep Australians safe. And we’ve already, in this interview, talked about AI chatbots and how they are harming Australian children. The proactive role I am playing here is trying to legislate a Digital Duty of Care, where AI chatbots cannot harm our children and the platforms have to identify those risks and mitigate against them.

SPEERS: So, that means you also support a slowdown when it comes to the development of AI?

WELLS: Well, ultimately, these are questions for these billionaires who control the world’s richest companies. Our role as law makers is to control how they conduct themselves on our shores. And I think we have some pretty accepted community standards around this. That’s what we’re trying to legislate with the Digital Duty of Care. We all know what harms our kids are suffering online. I genuinely believe- people come up to me on the street to say, please keep going. We know that they’re rich and they’re tough, and- but please keep going. And that’s the controllable part, as parliamentarians in Australia, that we can contribute to this problem.

SPEERS: Optus had another outage on Friday. It affected customers in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, dozens of 000 calls couldn’t get through. You took a range of steps after last year’s much bigger Optus outage. Are you satisfied enough is being done to stop this happening, particularly as we consider a summer ahead that might involve some serious emergencies?

WELLS: That’s right. And as you probably know, ACMA has now taken Optus to court over the outage last September, and they’re up for up to $500 million worth of fines for that. Happily, the outage that lasted just over an hour Friday afternoon had no adverse outcomes for Australians. Unfortunately, no piece of infrastructure – be it roads, bridges, poles, wires – is 100 per cent resilient. What we need to do is make sure these systems are as resilient as we can possibly make them. You said we’ve got disaster season coming up. We have been working with industry to make sure that temporary disaster roaming is ready for 1 October, for the start of national disaster season. So, that where a tower- you might live in a community that has a Telstra-to-TPG tower, where one of those fails, temporary disaster roaming will allow you to camp on to the alternate tower, not just for 000 but for voice and text. That’s a good thing to prepare for ahead of disaster season.

SPEERS: Final one, Anika Wells. As Sports Minister, look, you haven’t been attending as many big marquee events this year, noticeably took a step back after the expenses issues. But you were back there last night at the AFL to see the Brisbane Lions beat the Crows. Are you planning to go to the AFL Grand Final, should they get that far?

WELLS: Whether the Lions get there or not, I will be there because it’s a huge event in both the Communications and Sports stakeholder calendars. I see dozens of my stakeholders in that room. It’s a great opportunity for us to confer briefly rather than planning meetings months in advance. Everybody, be it broadcast CEOs, be it national sport organisations executives, expect to be able to see their Sport Minister and they expect their Sport Minister to be on the ground, witnessing athletes’ situations. And I will continue to do that.

SPEERS: And I’m sure you’ll enjoy it even more if the Lions do happen to be there on Grand Final Day.

WELLS: From your lips to God’s ears, David.

SPEERS: Okay. We will see. Anika Wells, thank you very much for joining us this morning.