BILLI FITZSIMONS, CO-HOST: Good morning, and welcome to The Daily Aus. I'm Billi FitzSimons.

ZARA SEIDLER, CO-HOST: I'm Zara Seidler.

FITZSIMONS: It's nearly been one year since Australia introduced a world-first social media ban for under-16s. And it turns out, that was just the beginning of the Australian Government's campaign against social media. But is it actually working? And with all the focus on social media, what are they doing about AI? Today, I sit down with the Minister for Communications, Anika Wells

SEIDLER: Billi, it's been a hot minute since we've had a politician sitting in this seat. So I'm very excited to listen to your interview with Anika Wells, and don't really want to set up too much because I think it speaks for itself. But is there anything, any disclaimer, any prologue that you think you need to add before we get into the interview?

FITZSIMONS: No disclaimers, I don't think.

SEIDLER: Okay, excellent. Our audience can decide that.

FITZSIMONS: I think the only thing to mention is the timing of this interview. So last week, Anika Wells introduced the Digital Duty of Care Bill. And that is the bill that will require online platforms to protect all Australians from what they call seriously harmful and illegal content online

That is one part of the bill.

SEIDLER: And people who that might be ringing a bell with could have seen the turning off the algorithm part, because that's part of this bill. But it's not just that. It's a huge piece of legislation with a lot of powers.

FITZSIMONS: Yes, so that's another part of the legislation, the idea that social media users should be able to opt out of the algorithm altogether. Elliot and I did a whole episode on this bill that we will link in the show notes. It was so interesting, because Elliot actually went through the process of setting up a TikTok account and figuring out how long it took for manosphere content to pop up. It was really interesting, so highly recommend listening to that.

But back to Anika Wells, she is also the Minister who introduced the social media ban for under-16s last year. And she was actually just included in the Time 100 list as one of the world's most influential rising stars because of that ban, which has now been followed by a number of other countries.

SEIDLER: It is crazy to look back at the year that Anika Wells has had, because there has been a lot of legislation in her portfolio. And then roguely, she's also the Minister for Sport.

FITZSIMONS: Yes.

SEIDLER: So, like, we've got all of this Communications stuff, that’s social media, it's AI, it's all of that. And then bam, look left, we've got sport. There's a lot to get through.

FITZSIMONS: It is a lot to get through, and I tried to get through it in this interview. She also has had a bit of controversy around her with the allegations of misuse of taxpayer money earlier this year. So I also ask her about that. There was a lot to get through.

SEIDLER: Okay. Well, without further ado, here is Billi interviewing Anika Wells, the Communications and Sport Minister.

FITZSIMONS: Anika Wells, thank you so much for joining The Daily Aus.

MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND SPORT ANIKA WELLS: Good to be with you.

FITZSIMONS: For anyone who doesn't know you, you have quite diverse portfolios. Tell us what it is exactly that you do.

WELLS: I'm the Minister for Communications and the Minister for Sport in the Federal Parliament, which is based out of Canberra and looks after national issues. I like to think that the Communications and Sport portfolios go very well together. There's a lot of stakeholders who have a stake in both Communications and Sport, like your broadcasters. A lot of high performance and professional codes are reliant upon what happens and whether they can get their sport on TV and when in order for their very survival. I think they go really well together.

FITZSIMONS: Well, I want to go to your Communications portfolio first. It's been nearly one year since Australia's social media ban for under-16s came into effect. How's it going?

WELLS: Could be going better, could be going worse. I think we saw a great initial response with 5 million accounts deactivated, but then it's tapered off. And the eSafety Commissioner has formed a view that five platforms in particular could be doing a lot more, and she's investigating those to see whether she will take them to court for being in breach of the law.

FITZSIMONS: So as of the most recent eSafety data, 42 per cent of children aged 10 to 15 still own a social media account, and it said the reason for that was ineffective implementation by the platforms, which is what you were just talking about with the eSafety Commissioner. But there haven't been any fines yet. Why hasn't it happened yet if you know that there has been ineffective implementation?

WELLS: Because unfortunately, this isn't a police officer on duty pointing a speeding radar at a car and issuing an on-the-spot fine. This is asking the eSafety Commissioner, our independent regulator, to take on some of the biggest, richest, most resourced companies in the world. And you want her to have reasonable prospects of success when she does that. And to do that, she actually has to go to the Federal Court and ask a judge to agree. And if they're found to be in breach of the law, they can pay the fines.

FITZSIMONS: And so when you say that the eSafety Commissioner is considering taking those companies to court, when will we find out if that will happen?

WELLS: That is for the eSafety Commissioner to decide. And there's some elements of the investigation that she or I can't divulge because just like a police investigation, when it's underway, there's only some things they can tell the media.

FITZSIMONS: Well, last week you introduced the Digital Duty of Care Bill, which is positioned as a follow-up to the social media ban. Tell us about it.

WELLS: It's a more holistic law. So we have duty of care in lots of different industries. It's a baseline workplace health and safety principle in Australia. If you build it, you're responsible for its risks. But in big tech, it's been an unregulated frontier for 15, 20 more years. We would say they've had their opportunities to make their platforms safe on their own terms of their own accord. They haven't done that. And now, Australian parents are asking us to step in and to make those platforms safer.

FITZSIMONS: And the maximum fine is just over $100 million. Meta is valued at about $1.8 trillion.

WELLS: Yes.

FITZSIMONS: Do you think that the fine is enough of a deterrent to get these companies to follow your law?

WELLS: Given that Meta unblushingly paid a $17 billion settlement in the US a month or two ago now, I don't think it's about the dollar value of the fines. I think it's about the social licence of these platforms to operate in Australia. They want our attention, chatbots want our affection. The longer our eyeballs linger on that screen, the more valuable we are. If they want that social licence, I think Australians are expecting some better safety standards than what we all know is going on.

FITZSIMONS: When you say social licence, can you just explain a little bit more what you mean by that term?

WELLS: Social licence is what Australians think of big tech. So they say that they want to uphold domestic law, that they want to respect local laws because they understand if they don't have the trust and confidence of Australians, they can't do the kind of business that they'd like to.

FITZSIMONS: Well, I think what's interesting is, these companies are already among the least trusted companies in the world, but that hasn't impacted how widely they are used. And so I'm interested, what evidence do you have that any further loss of public trust in these companies will actually result in a meaningful loss in users?

WELLS: I think because whilst this is a new paradigm we’re asking of the online world, this is a debate that Australia has had in lots of different spheres before the online world. So when we originally made seatbelts mandatory, that was an Australian first decades ago, the car manufacturing industry said it would put them out of business. And yet we did it, and yet it hasn’t. And now, car manufacturers compete to be the safest car on the market. They want you to choose the safest car. So I believe that we're legislating now, it feels like we're the canary in the coal mine, but we are setting a standard that means we will have big tech with thoughtful regulation, innovating for safe companies, and ultimately Pinterest or Snap or TikTok, whomever you like, will compete to be the safest platform that parents will let their children on.

FITZSIMONS: I guess my point is that people already don't trust these companies, but they use it at such a large scale. And if you're banking on that changing, is there any evidence that will happen?

WELLS: First of all, you're exactly right. These companies shape our lives in ways that no other company has ever shaped our lives before. That is a really significant thing. It makes the work that we're doing all the more important. What evidence is there out? There is some green shoots. So in the year since- well, it's not even a year, but almost a year since we've implemented the social media minimum age, you've seen Apple come out, they've improved the parental controls on their devices in order to try and lift the safety standard. Roblox, their global CEO and founder flew out to Australia to meet me to give me some assurances that they were doing what they could to clean up Roblox, and since then they have announced further parental controls. So there are green shoots of companies moving this way. And I think as long as we keep this drumbeat going and we keep legislating good laws that respond to what Australians want, we will see progress.

FITZSIMONS: In terms of the bill's wider support, the Coalition argues it will amount to censorship. How do you respond that?

WELLS: The Coalition and their cheerleaders are arguing against a censorship regime that they have imagined, not the bill that is in the parliament. This is a bill about what platforms do on the internet. It's not a bill about what people say on the internet.

FITZSIMONS: But it is about what people see on the internet and what they say, isn't it?

WELLS: No, so it's about the systems that platforms have in place. So it's about your systems as a platform to prevent harm. It's not about any individual post or meme or comment or reel. Your right to be wrong on the internet is preserved under the Digital Duty of Care. You can believe and say whatever you like, that's not impacted by Digital Duty of Care. I think it’s the same way, to use my car model – we expect car manufacturers to crash test car seats before they sell them to Australian parents. And when we made seatbelts compulsory, the government didn't then determine what destination you must go to or what colour car you must buy. They just made it safer by making seatbelts mandatory. This is the same.

FITZSIMONS: I love an analogy more than anyone.

But I just want to understand more about the specifics of the bill. Because when you say it's not about what someone says online, perhaps I've misunderstood, but I thought part of this is about preventing the harmful and illegal content that Australians see online, and that could be what someone says, if it is harmful or illegal.

WELLS: There’s probably three prongs to it: keeping kids safe, getting illegal content offline and user empowerment tools like choice over the algorithm. So you're talking about number two, which is about getting illegal material off. So it is about getting illegal material off, but it's not about you posting something that someone reports you for, you having to take it down or suffering a penalty for what you have said.

FITZSIMONS: It's not reactive, it's proactive.

WELLS: Yes. When we're talking about illegal material, I'm not making a new standard for what illegal is. These are common sense accepted illegal materials like pro-terror content, like child sexual abuse material, like child sexual grooming material. These are things that any Australian looks at and says, yes, that is illegal. It shouldn't be on the internet now, but it is prolific across platforms now.

FITZSIMONS: And so to be clear, if this bill comes into effect, that content would no longer be online on these platforms.

WELLS: If this bill comes into effect, the platform would be responsible for not letting that material onto their platform…

FITZSIMONS: [Interrupts] And if it's effective, it won't be on there.

WELLS: And if the platform is effective, it wouldn’t be on there in the first place.

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FITZSIMONS: The idea at the heart of this duty of care bill is that companies must consider the impact and the risks of their decisions on young people. And some have pushed for that same standard to apply to the government, specifically in climate. But your government rejected that. Why should a duty of care apply to tech companies and not the government?

WELLS: I certainly feel like I have a duty of care to my young constituents. The Digital Duty of Care, I think, changes the onus of responsibility so that someone's responsible for the harms online. If you design it, you are responsible for its risks, just the same as other industries. That's important because this industry is ultimately selling you as a product and your attention as a product for profit for their shareholders. So I think it's a slightly different ethical dilemma than what you're talking about, although I respect the efforts that people champion.

FITZSIMONS: The subject matter is different between the online world and climate change, but the core idea of having a duty of care is similar. And so, my question is, why should it apply to tech companies and not the government?

WELLS: Because this is about regulating an industry that is selling your attention and children's affection for revenue. And we think that implementing laws to put an onus on them to be responsible for their design features and functions is the right thing to do because it's an industry like any other industry.

FITZSIMONS: And you don't think there should be an onus on the government to consider the impacts and the risks of their decisions on young people?

WELLS: I think there is an onus on the government to consider-

FITZSIMONS: [Interrupts] But there's a difference between saying it and mandating it.

WELLS: I'm just literally thinking aloud, because it's an interesting concept you're putting to me, Billi. I guess we look to consequences. So at the moment, we see consequences of harm wrought on thousands of Australians because platforms don't take responsibility for the harms on their platforms. Governments take responsibility for our decisions because every three years, every constituent has the opportunity to throw us out. So I guess in that respect, I certainly feel a duty. I certainly lose many nights' sleep trying to discharge my duties and the consequence if a government doesn't, is there is an electoral consequence.

FITZSIMONS: To be clear, you're not considering applying that same standard to the government in any other area of government?

WELLS: I am not as Minister of Communications, no.

FITZSIMONS: All right, let's move to AI. The head of one the biggest AI companies has called for a slowdown in the speed of development and for governments to take an active role in that. Do you want to see that slowdown?

WELLS: I certainly, the second half, feel like I'm stepping up to the plate, with government trying to step up and regulate an industry. I thought that was a really thoughtful, interesting contribution. I want the Internet to be safer. So I am, through improving the social media minimum age laws and trying to legislate a digital duty of care, trying to make online safety part of the imperatives of any consideration around AI standards.

FITZSIMONS: So do you want to see a slowdown of AI?

WELLS: I don't think it's a yes or no answer for me.

FITZSIMONS: Another question about AI. Is your government considering a ban on AI use for under-16s?

WELLS: So AI services like chatbots will be captured under the Digital Duty of Care. Obviously, there's a lot of under-16s that use chatbots and gaming. We want to make sure that those spaces are safe. The social media ban is about something that's particularly for functions and features that we know are harmful – the endless scroll, the toxic popularity meters. We need to holistically teach our kids about all of these elements of their online world, and we would like to do that before we release them to social media.

FITZSIMONS: But not considering extending the social media ban to AI?

WELLS: Not at this stage, no. I'd rather improve enforcement and get some better compliance first. That's my first priority.

FITZSIMONS: All right, let's move on. We told our audience this morning that we are interviewing you and their-

WELLS: [Interrupts] Hello, everyone.

FITZSIMONS: Their top question was around your prior misuse of taxpayer funds. Earlier this year, you repaid more than $10,000 in travel costs that were found to be in breach of the rules. What have you changed since all that happened?

WELLS: I gave all of my 243 ministerial trips to the independent regulator and had them run the ruler over all of it, and they found in there four honest mistakes. That report is available. It got published in full. It's on the website, and it's been available since May. And then we've tightened our processes in the office. And then I also think something I've learned out of this is that the rules and the pub test are different tests. And whilst you might do your best to discharge your duties within the rules, there's a whole separate question around the pub test, and I've learned some lessons out of that.

FITZSIMONS: But then the rules were also broken. It wasn't just the pub test.

WELLS: I was cleared of any misconduct, and I was happy to repay where they pointed out that the choices that we made set outside the rules.

FITZSIMONS: When you say you were cleared of any misconduct, I thought there was a breach of rules.

WELLS: Cleared of any misconduct. Like I said, there were four mistakes. So I stayed in Canberra and flew my family down a day earlier because I thought that would save the fare of me flying to Brisbane and back, flying them a day earlier. Flying my family a day earlier meant that it sat outside the rules, so I had to repay that trip. So that's what I mean, trying to get a better understanding of what those rules are and having more people in my office understand what those rules are. And then, also I think understanding and trying to understand where even if you go through that process, there’s a separate pub test that people will apply.

FITZSIMONS: All right, last topic, gambling. Australians lose more money per person to gambling than any other country. Earlier this year, the parliament passed gambling reform. That reform did not introduce a total ban on ads for online gambling, despite it being recommended by a parliamentary committee. Why not?

WELLS: When we got that report, people were seeing eight ads per hour, and we've capped it at three. We tried to land a difficult balance between meeting the desires of the Australian public, which is what I heard over and over again, was just get these ads out of my face. I don't want to see these ads if I don't want to see them. So the measures that we came up with were designed to do that, so that if you don't want to see it, you can opt out of seeing it.

FITZSIMONS: But you'd still see three per hour?

WELLS: Well, you don't have to see it at all if you don't want to. So without-

FITZSIMONS: [Interrupts] If you're not watching TV is the only way.

WELLS: If you’re streaming through Seven Plus or Nine Now, Foxtel or Kayo or any of those things, you will be able to opt out entirely. The cap relates to just straight broadcast TV, and the reason that that remains is, one, we've got to keep the balance and not send these companies to the wall, because people rely on free-to-air TV for lots of different things in this country.

FITZSIMONS: Like I said, the initial recommendation from a committee, which was chaired by a Labor MP, was to implement a complete ban, and like you've just said, the position you got to was a partial ban. How much of a role did gambling lobbyists play in how this bill or how this law ended up?

WELLS: Well, I never met with a gambling lobbyist, and I think that that particular point was prosecuted. It was overblown. Like, the people that were concerned about this, they said these laws went far too far. There's lots of people who would have liked to see us go further. It's about striking a balance between those different positions.

FITZSIMONS: Your team would have met with gambling lobbyists though?

WELLS: Yeah.

FITZSIMONS: Anika Wells, thank you so much for joining The Daily Aus.

WELLS: Thanks, Billi.