MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND SPORT ANIKA WELLS: Good morning, everyone. The Albanese Government is focused on growing and building Australia's defence capability while creating local jobs. Today, I can announce that L3Harris Technologies is delivering the secure and reliable communication systems that our soldiers need to operate safely and effectively on one of Australia's most important and well-known military assets, the Bushmaster. And that is happening right here in its Indo-Pacific Regional Support Centre in Pinkenba. The Albanese Government's investment in Defence is part of the reason that L3Harris has opened this centre, which is already supporting about 60 jobs. This contract supports 15 existing local jobs, it will create two additional specialist positions. Importantly, it also means more opportunities for L3Harris to bring on apprentices to gain practical experience in an advanced specialised industry. I just met Dan and Bri. They told me about the amazing work that they have been able to do here.

We want to see advanced manufacturing right here in Brisbane, providing for local families, and that is what L3Harris is delivering right here. Our investment builds the local skills and experience needed to attract more defence, more advanced manufacturing work to Brisbane in the future, and Australia's Bushmasters are an incredible piece of engineering, and it is the Protected Mobility Vehicle of choice in nine countries. The Albanese Government is investing $750 million to deliver a pipeline of Bushmasters, and the work L3Harris will do for the next 3 years is a result of this investment. Now I'm going to hand over to Andrew, from L3Harris Technologies, to give you some more details.

ANDREW RUSHBROOK, L3 HARRIS TECHNOLOGIES: Good morning. I'd like to first acknowledge the traditional owners of the land of which we are standing and to pay our respects to the elders past and present. I also want to particularly acknowledge the veterans amongst us who’ve served our nation in uniform and to thank them as well. My name is Andrew Rushbrook, I’m the Managing Director for L3Harris Communications. Minister, distinguished guests, men and women of L3Harris, first let me say thank you so much, Minister, for being here to make this announcement, and take time out of your busy schedule for us. We greatly appreciate it. L3Harris employs over 500 people across every state and territory in Australia. And we've supported and engage in support for both the Australian Defence Force, the New Zealand Defence Force, our coalition partners and allies. First responders as well across all domains, land, sea, air, cyber and space. The site on which you now stand is one of five major facilities across the country. As the Minister mentioned, the Indo-Pacific Regional Support Centre, which recently received a $3 million capital upgrade, represents state of the art maintenance, repair, overhaul facilities, providing what I think is the most important part of this message, local sovereign support to the products that we serve and to the Australian war fighter.

Specifically, the award of this communication integration contract, as part of the Land 4111 Bushmaster Modernisation Program, will ensure that the ADF continues to field world class, leading, secure and resilient military communications to the in-service Bushmasters, which you can see behind me. This capability is vital in an increasingly complex and contested command and control environment within which our war fighters may one day operate.

L3Harris will design and assemble the specialised mounts and vehicle integration kits needed to securely fit the tactical radios within these vehicles and other communications equipment. These kits will bring the equipment together as one reliable, resilient, modern communication system within the vehicle. For us here, this means growth, and this award will mean an expansion of our workforce, and it also means that we'll be able to increase our apprenticeship intake, and we're looking at five additional apprentices coming in in 2027. So this is really great news for us. We appreciate the Commonwealth's faith in us to deliver this important upgrade. And, as our local member, we are truly chuffed to be able to show you and showcase this capability and to show you the facility in which these upgrades will continue- will be carried out. Thank you again all for your time. Thank you.

JOURNALIST: Yeah, just on this, it says 80 in-service Australian Army Bushmaster Command and Troop variants. The DOD says we have about 789 vehicles. Are those other vehicles getting upgraded or are they later models? Why aren't they being upgraded too?

RUSHBROOK: LAND 4111, the Commonwealth seems to have multiple phases. What you're looking at is Phase 2, and the Commonwealth will probably release those phases as they go through.

JOURNALIST: Minister, just in regards to the OpenAI incident today. Can you clarify what kind of data has been accessed by the OpenAI agent?

WELLS: I’ve spoken to both Katy Gallagher and Mark Butler this morning, my ministerial colleagues. You would have seen that we've opened an investigation into this, and we've also asked the Joint Select Committee to look into the impacts and consequences this might have for Australians. I would say, as the Minister of Communications, we want big tech to take bigger responsibility for Australians and their safety and their welfare. It is to me highly concerning that OpenAI didn't feel obliged to tell us anything for three months.

One of the reasons why I'm trying to legislate a Digital Duty of Care is because we want big tech to take responsibility for the harms they are doing to Australians on Australian shores. The delay of a three-month notification is a perfect example of an unregulated industry where big tech clearly feels that they can do whatever they like, and that's not going to wash here in Australia. That's why we want to legislate a Digital Duty of Care.

JOURNALIST: To those Australians who are [indistinct], can you give them any information about what personal information [indistinct]?

WELLS: The acting Prime Minister Richard Marles, and the Minister for the Government Services, Katy Gallagher will be standing up shortly, to provide more information to reassure Australians. You would have heard our Prime Minister overnight in the US speak to his discussions with Sam Altman. It’s a good and right thing that we will investigate this through several methods… But when Australians want to know what we're going to do about it, we want big tech to take accountability. We want unregulated industries to implement some basic safety standards here on Australian shores, and that’s what I’ll be trying to do when I introduce the Digital Duty of Care.

JOURNALIST: Minister, if a person did this this would be a federal crime. What does the penalty look like to the Federal Government?

WELLS: You would have heard Richard Marles speak this morning, and you will hear Richard and Katy speak again shortly about referring that for inquiry, with the Australian Signals Directorate as well as the Joint Select Committee looking into whether there has been criminal breaches here, and whether there should be any repercussions. At the moment that information and investigation is still under way.

JOURNALIST: Minister, on the duty of care, according to News24 polling, almost half of Australians are uncomfortable with you having the power to determine additional categories of harm for content, rising to 63 per cent among 18 to 24 year olds. Why should Australians trust a politician to decide what constitutes harm online, when so many voters clearly don’t want you to have that power? [Inaudible]…

WELLS: Harry, I was heartened with that same News24 polling that you are referring to, showing that 70 per cent Australians want and support a Digital Duty of Care to be introduced. I’ve already said- I said four days after the release of the exposure draft, and I’m happy to reconfirm for you again today, that I’m happy to look for ways that we have the parliament to determine that, rather than the Minister, the rule making power that we have put in the exposure draft was a rule-making power that the Liberal Minister, Paul Fletcher, put into the Online Safety Act, he legislated in 2021, the Coalition has since expressed concern with that, I said immediately – the impetus around that is urgency. We want a new serious harm to be designated so that when parents wake up to find their children, photographs of them at the beach have been nudified overnight by Grok, which is what happened to us in early January. When that happens to your child, you as a parent want that serious harm and consequences designated as soon as possible. For that reason, we drafted the eSafety Commissioner and the Minister to make that power. If it needs to go to the Parliament to secure Coalition support, I am more than open to that, I have reiterated that several times.

JOURNALIST: The Trump administration says that the Digital Duty of Care risks becoming a mechanism for censorship, specifically a question of the power according to you and the legislation. Why should Australians dismiss those concerns when they’re now being raised by one of Australia’s closest allies?

WELLS: The US administration is entitled to their position on this. They have raised the same position in other jurisdictions, like the EU and the UK when they’ve attempted or delivered similar measures in those jurisdictions. We are working here to make big tech responsible for their actions on Australian shores. Overnight’s example demonstrates that big tech clearly does not feel beholden in a way to make themselves accountable to Australia, despite literally using their data for their own purposes. That needs to stop. We are drawing a line in the sand. The Digital Duty of Care isn’t a bill that is going to cure the internet. That is not what we’re setting out to do. What the Digital Duty of Care does is deliver a basic set of safety standards and puts the onus on the shoulders of big tech rather than on the victims, which is where things stand today.

JOURNALIST: Do you think it’s appropriate that the US intervenes in an Australian debate like this?

WELLS: Like I said, the US administration has put very similar positions to other jurisdictions when they’ve attempted similar measures.

JOURNALIST: The Prime Minister said in New York it will target mis and disinformation, despite you saying clearly a few weeks ago that wasn’t the aim. Which is it?

WELLS: The Prime Minister was speaking to the broader online environment that we find ourselves in. You know that I’ve made those same remarks about the experience that parliamentarians are facing when we navigate online discourse, bot farms, volumetric attacks, all these things that are now part and parcel of Australian public discourse online. That being said, this is not a bill designed to cure all frailties of the internet. This is a bill to implement basic safety standards, making online services identify where there is risk of harm on their service, and mitigate against those harms. And they need to mitigate those harms and satisfy the eSafety Commissioner that they have mitigated against those harms.

JOURNALIST: How will communication between OpenAI and the government in Australia be fixed?

WELLS: A worthy question for the investigation and the Joint Select Committee to consider in coming weeks and months as they respond to this.

JOURNALIST: And what AI guardrails need to be put in place to prevent this from happening in the future?

WELLS: There's a number of things that the Albanese Government have afoot at the moment. That's what makes us a world-leading government when it comes to online safety. I won’t reiterate what I've said about the Digital Duty of Care this morning, but I will point to the fact that we have also said we seek to legislate AI standards, and we would like to do that as soon as we get the report back from the Joint Select Committee. We would like to do that if not towards the end of the year, at the start of the next year. That goes beyond what we've already talked about, about data centres, making sure that data centres look after their own energy, don’t leave their community in worse environmental standards than what they found. This goes to online safety. The Digital Duty of Care is part of that, and I think we're now having a worthy and important discussion through the Joint Select Committee about what other recommendations we can do to make big tech more accountable to Australians.

JOURNALIST: When did you and the Prime Minister specifically find out about this Medicare breach?

WELLS: I can't speak to the Prime Minister- but I think he’s iterated a timeline. I heard Richard Marles give some public comments this morning about the timeline, and like I said, Katy and Richard will stand up, even maybe as we speak now to give further updates.

JOURNALIST: What about you, Minister? When did you find out about it?

WELLS: This morning.

JOURNALIST: The government previously tried and failed to pass misinformation and disinformation laws, and you’ve repeatedly declined to rule out revisiting that issue. Can you guarantee that you’ll never seek to control speech or information?

WELLS: Harry, I would not characterise my comments as repeatedly ruling these things out. I’ve said on a number of occasions, it’s not part of my delivery agenda for this term. The Minister for Communications at the time that the bill was withdrawn from the senate, said that we would not seek to reintroduce it. You can’t be clearer than that.

JOURNALIST: Minister, World Rowing has been a bit silent about the state government saying that Fitzroy had been signed, sealed and delivered. Have you had any correspondence or discussions with World Rowing and what do you make of the state’s claim it has been signed, sealed and delivered?

WELLS: I do discuss- I do see members, representatives of the international federations from time to time. I have discussed this with them, though this was back at the World Paddle Champs probably coming up on a year ago now. I would say from the perspective of the Federal Government, Minister King is still waiting on the PVR to be delivered by the Queensland Government. So from our perspective, we don't have that yet. So, by definition, it would not be signed, sealed and delivered, and we look forward to getting those details. It is a matter for the Queensland Government to decide how accountable and transparent they are around the costings and around the information they're providing to the public. They are obliged to provide a PVR to the Federal Government.

JOURNALIST: Are you concerned with the reputational risks if they do have to raze riverbanks and destroy the environment to get that venue over the line?

WELLS: I have raised those concerns in appropriate forums, and I look forward to receiving the PVR to the Federal Government for us to be able to settle our view on that.

JOURNALIST: Peter V'landys is about to become the executive chair of the NRL Have you spoken to stakeholders about this move?

WELLS: I have spoken to Peter V’landys and stakeholders about this move. He has been great for the game- the growth of the game, has been really beneficial to Australian athletes, families, communities here in Queensland. And I look forward to seeing him again this weekend as we hope the Dolphins make their first grand final and we hope the Broncos defeat the Titans on Sunday. Big weekend ahead for the NRL.

JOURNALIST: What have your dealings with Peter been like, and how would you assess his ability as a sporting administrator?

WELLS: They’ve been excellent. He is excellent.

JOURNALIST: Are you heading to the Lions grand final?

WELLS: Yes.

JOURNALIST: It’s been a little while since you've headed to a major sporting event after the expenses stuff. Are you looking forward to getting back to major events?

WELLS: I dispute that. I’ve been to a regular series of major sporting events this year. For example- shall I list them off for you. But they’ve all been covered, indefatigably, by NewsCorp, as I attend each and every event. I was at the prelim- sorry I wasn’t at the prelim, I was at the semi-final. I’ll be at the Dolphins prelim on Friday night. I was at the NFL, I was at the Grand Prix, I was at the Brisbane tennis, alongside countless numbers of grassroots sporting activities as we try to strike a balance between grassroots activities and high-performance sporting activities. I always relish the opportunity to see athletes in their own environments. There is nothing that helps a sport minister make decisions about sequencing and resourcing better than talking to support staff and athletes where they're actually training, where they're actually competing, in order to understand their needs and then try and get them that money through a federal budget process.

JOURNALIST: Just on the Olympics, the government says that all the permanent venues will be contained within that $7.1 billion. There's been some talk around that being difficult and potentially the quality of venues being reduced. Would the Commonwealth be willing to increase its share?

WELLS: No, we have said all along that we're capped at $3.435 billion. Since then, the current state government has reiterated they are capping themselves at $7.1 billion, and it is for them to demonstrate to Queenslanders why they have taken those decisions, and why Queenslanders are experiencing best value from those permanent decisions.

JOURNALIST: But as a sport minister, you know, are you concerned that the quality of those venues, this once-in-a-generation opportunity for Queensland, will be diminished by that low funding cap?

WELLS: Well, ultimately, any cuts that, hypothetically, a state government might choose to make around permanent budgets in order to meet a budget, they have to underwrite anyway through operating costs. So, my hope would be that we secure the highest quality, most future facing facilities available because we are talking about something that's six years away, and if you look at stadiums across the world like SoFi that everybody points to, you want to make sure that Brisbane and Australians experience that level when it comes to 31 July 2032, but ultimately, they are making decisions within a budget process, and we respect that.

Thank you.