Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister outline to the House the outrageous decision taken by Facebook this morning affecting Australians seeking access to critical health information during the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis?

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Braddon who has been a great advocate for veterans' mental health as well as children's cancer projects such as the Zero Childhood Cancer project. As part of all that work, public information is absolutely fundamental—the ability to provide health information, the ability to provide mental health information, the ability to provide vaccination information at this critical time.

On this day we know that a major global corporation has taken a decision which is denying Australians access to fundamental health, mental health and vaccination information. Facebook has taken steps which are unprecedented and reprehensible, unacceptable in a democracy such as this and an abuse of their power. In particular, the advice that I have is that, during the course of the day, government health pages for Queensland Health, ACT Health, SA Health and NSW Health have all been affected. Dementia Australia has had its Facebook page and information affected. Those, I'm advised, thankfully, have been addressed in part. However, as at coming to question time, the advice that I have is that the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne has still not had its Facebook feed rectified. MS Australia, Danila Dilba Health Service in the Northern Territory that provides support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and in particular, Bowel Cancer Australia and the Kids' Cancer Project have been blocked. This is outrageous and unacceptable.

We expect that Facebook will fix these actions immediately and never repeat them again. This is an assault on a sovereign nation. It is an assault on people's freedom and in particular it is an utter abuse of big technology's market power and control over technology. This will go around the world, but this stops. This is unacceptable.

I will say this: apparently, their original mission was to bring the world closer together and to allow people to help share and express what matters to them. That seems to have been replaced by profit over people. We say to Facebook: stop this now, and perhaps it's time to put people over profit.