Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Young people are apathetic. They don't care about politics and are indifferent to the goings-on in Canberra—or so the narrative goes. Not the young people I've met. The youngsters in Young Labor have a fire in their bellies and, rather than complain, they roll up their sleeves and step into the arena. From uni students, apprentices, grads, men and women, they want to make a difference. They door-knock, make calls and give up their time on top of their busy study and work commitments—and why? For that better future that we all crave.

Activism has many faces, and Young Labor have decided that politics is their preferred pathway for change. They're not alone. As the great Labor PM Julia Gillard said, 'Nothing beats politics for driving change at speed and at scale.' Despite the bad press, this House gets things done. But there's a catch—Labor governments are, overwhelmingly, the lifters and the doers. From Medicare to the pension, super, paid parental leave and now super on paid parental leave, a gender-equal government, the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the net zero transition with climate targets, childhood dental, the National Reconstruction Fund, a skills plan backed by free TAFE, and more affordable housing, Labor governments get things done, and we are in a hurry. 'Never waste today' is the mantra—we hold it close because these roles are hard-won and always temporary.

Young Labor members know that ours is a party of government. We are not the spectators in the cheap seats. Ours is a broad church, from struggle street to billionaire's row and everything in between. We welcome the challenges because it is only with challenge that you grow as a leader. Young Labor members know that ours is a government and a movement intent on doing good rather than entrenching the status quo. I look at these young people with admiration that they figured this out in their youth at a time when many young people are going with the flow, unaware of their own agency. I thank them for their contribution because, thanks to them, Labor is here to stand in their corner and in the corners of all Australians.

The $10 billion Reddit stock market float in the US was a stunning result that leaves me cold. What is the market rewarding—conspiracy theorists, extremism, violence? Meta turns 20 this year, and I reflect that it should have been strangled at birth. To the litany of social harms, from extremism, scams and the weakening of democracies we can add the deteriorating mental health of our children. Social media companies push 'ana' tips—short for anorexia—restrictive eating patterns that are incompatible with the demands of growing brains and bodies, leading to the emergence and perpetuation of eating disorders that affect one in 10 young people below the age of 20: kids—our kids. Ideally, we should all go on a social media diet, but failing that, we need guardrails: algorithmic transparency; better content detection and moderation, knowing that it is not watertight; age verification mechanisms that keep kids out of adult content. Is that image or voice synthetic or real? What is the source of origin? It a liberal democracy or a failed state? Is it machine or bot that is pushing this, or a human? Show me the fingerprints of man or machine and then let me decide before I reshare.

We can put as much scaffolding around our kids—like respectful relationships education and critical thinking skills or kitchen table chats, and we should do all those things—but it is no match for tech giants who employ an army of behavioural scientists and who have created algorithms that know us better than ourselves. Self-control is a Jedi mind trick. If the people of Higgins—young and old alike—want action then I urge you and the crossbench to support our Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill and speak up when our review into the Online Safety Act opens. The social media giants are not above the law. Let's hold them to account.

Low income workers are more likely to be women, migrants and young people. They are more vulnerable to insecure work and exploitation. They are also the ones who needed a $23 billion cost-of-living lifeline, ranging from energy relief to rent assistance. Now there is a furious argument that they should not be given a wage rise. In fact, if you don't want to throw a lifeline to people, you should raise all the boats, and that is what we are doing by backing in a minimum wage rise for people, so that we do not end up with a permanent underclass of working poor in this country.

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