Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House acknowledges that:

(1) the social media platform TikTok poses a serious national security threat and should be banned on all government devices;

(2) Australian user-data is accessible in mainland China, and that Chinese companies are required under its national security laws to assist its intelligence agencies and to keep that assistance secret;

(3) the Government was warned of the serious threat nine months ago, and must now immediately act to follow the lead of our close security partners including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the European Union by banning TikTok on government devices;

(4) given the close relationship between TikTok, and its parent company ByteDance, and the Chinese Communist Party, the social media platform could be used to promote pro-Chinese Communist Party narratives, to suppress anti-Chinese Communist Party narratives, to stoke divisions in our country, and to influence our political system.

TikTok has become a video-sharing phenomenon. It's Australia's seventh most used social media platform and is used by over a billion people worldwide, and we have one of its most vocal users in the Chamber today, I notice, Deputy Speaker Young. Forty-seven per cent of TikTok users are between the ages of 10 and 29—I can guarantee you the member for Bruce is not one of them—and just under 50 per cent of teenagers claim to use the platform. Its popularity is largely owed to its aggressive algorithm, which recommends content based on previous engagement with content and apps beyond TikTok itself.

Concerningly, the app has been found to show children shocking content. I know that's not the member for Bruce's content, but there is some content which promotes self-harm and suicide tips, and offers practical steps to eating disorders. The algorithm then promotes this content more and more. That should be cause for consideration of a ban in and of itself, but it's the wider national security concerns that I want to address today.

For those who are unaware, in 2017, communist China introduced the National Intelligence Law. This law provides that all organisations and companies registered or operating in China are required to hand over their data to the Chinese communist intelligence agencies. This includes multinationals based in Australia and elsewhere. While TikTok itself is based in the US, its parent company, ByteDance, is based in China. In response to concerns raised about links with the CCP and its intelligence law, the shadow minister wrote to TikTok. Nine months ago, the shadow minister received a reply in which they implicitly acknowledged that Australian user data has been accessed in mainland China, echoing points made by the CEO of TikTok USA just two weeks before. Let me repeat: the data of Australian families, businesses, institutions and particularly children is being stored, accessed and used by communist China.

Last week a United States congressional investigation confirmed as such and highlighted TikTok's connection to the Chinese Communist Party. Even their board is compromised. Board director Mr Wu Shugang holds an office within China's cyberspace administration. It's unsurprising, therefore, that the most fervent campaign against these measures is the Chinese Communist Party, who have committed themselves to resolutely opposing any changes to the ownership structure of the app. As we speak, the US government is investigating the company for spying and for the surveillance of American journalists. The evidence is overwhelming, and yet we are sitting on our hands and talking about it, nine months after they confirmed their use of data in writing. Why are we lagging behind? We've heard rumours and whispers that this Labor government was looking at banning TikTok from government devices. Reviews and studies are all well and good, but on this issue, once again, it is the coalition in opposition doing the job of governing. We are asking the questions that those opposite should be asking. We are advocating on the issues that those opposite should be taking ownership of. I want to acknowledge the efforts and the work that is being done by the shadow minister in this space. He has been very effective in calling out misbehaviour in the cyber world, and I want to thank him on behalf of this place.

We must take immediate action to rid government devices of this insidious app. All regulatory options should be on the table. We must hold TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, to account. This should not be a matter of party politics. Our primary role in this place is to protect Australians and their interests at home and abroad. I want to challenge members in this place and in the other place: don't promote an app or software which causes damage and harm to Australian individuals. Don't support a business that does not support Australians. (Time expired)

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will repurpose the first word from your speech, Member for Fisher—I agree with that. TikTok is indeed, for better or worse, a global phenomenon. It is the fastest-growing app in Australia. It shot up during the pandemic, particularly, as people were sitting home watching videos. More than a billion people worldwide and millions of Australians use it. It's also addictive to some people. Like any social media app, any game, it can be addictive. There are certainly social harms. These things are not black and white with any online activity. It also brings joy to millions of people, particularly young people. That's a first statement. They share information. They share videos. It can be fun. It can be informative. It can be, but I agree with you regarding the concerns about promotion of eating disorders and, particularly, anxiety amongst young people and status envy of other people's glorified, glamorised lives. That's a problem which is common to Instagram, Facebook and all manner of apps—things which I'm not cool enough to know, no doubt, not being a teenager in that bracket, as you rightly pointed out. But it has become especially important in the lives of many Australian young people. There is a generation who simply don't engage in traditional ways in politics, in current affairs and in ideas and, increasingly, have turned to social media, including but not limited to TikTok, to promote their activities. I was down at the Dandenong Mosque on the Islamic Council of Victoria's open day and had a terrific time with the youth group there, who were showing me their new youth group room. The thing they were most proud about was the TikToks which they had created to repurpose, if you like, or refresh the promotion of their values—their community values, community service—to engage a younger generation.

I'll state upfront: yes, the media reports do go out there—I think the Australian doesn't like me; everyone else got a nice photo, but I got a silly photo when they said I was the most popular Australian politician on TikTok, with apparently 147,000 followers. But I do believe you've got to engage Australians where they are, whether that's down the railway station, outside the shops or at the senior citizens centre, and the fact is: millions of Australians are online. This is a dilemma for all of us. It's not black and white. Those forums are where people consume information, and frankly it's where they'll be far more subject to disinformation and misinformation. If we're not there—I mean all of us; you too; you can go on TikTok, Wally!—then the only people who are there are the disinformation, misinformation crowd. So it's a dilemma. I've had hundreds of young people contact me saying, 'Thank you for opening my eyes to this issue,' or that issue. Many parents contact me saying: 'Thank you for getting my young person engaged in politics. I've never been able to, although I wish they'd stop calling me late at night from their university telling me about something you posted!'

But I also take national security seriously, and I hope the mover of the motion would acknowledge this. I am Chair—you're the Deputy Chair—of the Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. I've been on TikTok since May 2021. I've never had it on my government phone. I've had it on this phone. This is not a prop. This is the famous red phone, which I referred to. It is not a communist China gag; it's because it actually is bright red. I use it for community engagement, and TikTok lives by itself there. I've had a cautious approach since day one. It confuses the algorithm. On the rare occasion that I hop on and have a bit of a look, I seem to get cat videos and pimple-popping videos. But I had a cautious approach because I was well aware, in 2021, of the questions and concern regarding TikTok and data and cybersecurity. TikTok is not a new social media platform; these concerns have been around since 2016. So I do have to call out the tawdry politicisation of the issue. I'm not saying the views aren't genuinely held, but the government got elected mid last year and, in September 2022, the minister commissioned a Home Affairs review of security risks of social media and the settings governing them, because we take this seriously.

The previous speaker said that the coalition in opposition is doing the job of government. To that I say, lol. it's your special party trick. You don't have any policies. The opposition doesn't have any. The deputy leader said very clearly, 'We don't have policies; we're the opposition.' This is your party trick. You complain about stuff that you didn't do in the decade you were in office. This is my point: the government's review is not focused on just one platform. It's now with the minister. The government is seriously considering it and will take appropriate, considered action. The review is classified, but the action will be public. The scope of the review, though, was broad. It wasn't just one little thing to keep getting yourselves in the newspaper. It was much broader than that. It looked at multiple national security risks across all of social media and online apps. I think it is an important debate, but we could stop the cheap political pointscoring. You did have a decade in office, and we're trying to actually do something about it.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, of course, rise to speak in favour of this motion. I thank the member for Fisher for bringing this important debate to the chamber. I strongly encourage the government to take this issue seriously and to look at, to begin with, what our very important allies, particularly our Five Eyes partners, are doing when it comes to their approach to this application. The jury is well and truly in on these national security risks that TikTok poses. We've seen our other Five Eyes allies already take decisive action when it comes to the use of this application on government devices. Of course, in this motion, we're calling for the Australian government merely to do what our partners, with whom we have a close intelligence-sharing operation and cooperation, are doing themselves. Obviously they have taken those actions because they see a significant risk from this technology, given the data storage revelations that have come to light recently. In testimony in the United States just in the last week or two, we've seen the company confirm that they house and store data on their users. We've got extreme concerns about what could happen to that data and the variety of ways that that data could be used. It could feed certain content to users that might drive their awareness and, perhaps, their opinions on important issues. It could interfere in our democracy as we hold elections, in particular. There is the risk that content will be mangled through the use of algorithms to drive certain views and certain attitudes in, and amongst, those users that could influence our elections.

The mover of the motion talked about the risk to young people in particular. The other strong concern we've got—on top of the very important national security issues that this raises—is the type of content that is being fed to young, impressionable people. It is also of great concern when, as the mover mentioned, we hear of content that might facilitate a decision to commit suicide or promote the development of a challenging or significant psychological issue, such as an eating disorder or the like. The fact that young children who are so impressionable are at risk from this application driving that sort of behaviour is extremely serious.

I think the way in which the company operates and the way in which the algorithm operates are extremely opaque at best, and, at worst, could, as I've outlined, be used in ways that are designed to drive the behaviour of people in our society at democratic milestones—that is, at elections and the like—and drive them to hold certain attitudes that are incorrect because they are receiving content that they do not realise is designed to drive their views on a particular issue rather than being dispassionate and a fair representation of those sorts of topics.

Now, as technology continues to develop rapidly, we've got to be very aware of the risky side of technology and particularly of the ways in which it can potentially cause harm, from a national security point of view and just more generally in our society. The fact that this application can currently be used on government devices is a serious issue, in our view, and one that the government should reflect on; it should consider going down the path of many of our allies and not allowing this technology to be on those devices.

This technology may possibly have the capacity—if not now then in the future—to scrape data from those devices and access points into networks and the like. We've certainly heard that when and where decisions have been made to ban this software going on such devices, that it has been as to a very credible risk—where one little update to the software of an application might suddenly give it a capability that we just haven't anticipated and haven't got the ability to protect against, particularly when it comes to penetrating our government networks and accessing information. You've got to protect people's data and people have to know that, when they're using their phone, they are not having information about themselves being used and stored, to be, potentially, used against them at some time, or to influence them, or, indeed, to be used to penetrate our important government networks. And, for those reasons, this motion should definitely be supported.

Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks to the member for Bruce for his previous comments, and I note that they were measured comments. TikTok is a fascinating platform, but it can also be quite scary. It can be used for joy and for making creative content, but there's also a very dark side to it as well—algorithms that promote behaviours such as suicidal tendencies or eating disorders.

I see social media as being part of different generations' normal bread and butter. I feel like I come from the generation of Facebook, whereas the generation younger than me uses Instagram and then the next generation uses TikTok, but the platforms that kids are using in school are things like BeReal, and I know that there are lots of people who are members of this place who use different platforms.

The thing I will point out is that we are talking about two grave matters: national security and censorship, and it is important that we treat these topics carefully and tread carefully. I note that the Labor Party and the coalition have a proud history of bipartisanship on matters of national security and I point to the recent success of the AUKUS deal. We should be reluctant to use these matters for political pointscoring and we should never be flippant about censorship.

This is a unique challenge, and our response to this cannot be developed overnight. There is a lot of uneasiness in the community, including in Swan, about the collection of data by social media giants and how they use it. It's something that a lot of my constituents have spoken to me about. When there's a national security concern about what data is collected and how it could be used against Australia, it's important that we think about our response. We can't rush into this; nor can we act on emotions.

The Department of Home Affairs has provided its report on the security risks associated with this to the Minister for Home Affairs, and the minister is working through her considered response. Public information will be provided in due course. The review itself is classified and will not be made public, which is typical for matters of national security and is appropriate.

Labor, as always, has a plan, and we are prioritising our national security. Our October budget saw $211 billion committed to Australia's Defence Force over the forward estimates. We're investing in Australia's cyberwarfare capabilities, with $8.8 billion committed to the Australian Signals Directorate over the forward estimates.

It's also important to note that TikTok is not a new social media platform, and the concerns around TikTok aren't new. In fact, they've been public since it was launched in 2016. I note that the Liberal Party is on TikTok and has about 14,600 followers. I know that TikTok followers are not a metric that matters on election day, but I do note that Labor has 88,900 followers. I'm certain that the member for Fisher's motive for this motion does not relate to the fact that Labor has six times more followers on TikTok, but I will note the irony of the opposition saying it should be banned, yet the Liberal TikTok account last posted three days ago. And my 'zillennial' team member, Linda Pickering, also pointed out that it wasn't a very good TikTok! That last comment is in jest. But, in all seriousness, the Albanese Labor government is reviewing the situation, and I hope that the member for Fisher pursued this matter with his colleagues when they were in government.

There is nothing new about the threats posed by foreign actors on social media. We saw the weaponisation of Facebook during the 2016 US presidential election by foreign actors and those wishing to stoke disunity. The Albanese Labor government is working hard to identify, investigate and disrupt acts of foreign interference, including those on social media, as well as to build Australia's resilience to this threat. We should look at the threats of social media and foreign interference broadly, without focusing on just one platform; otherwise we may create blind spots in our defence. It's important that we look at the full suite of apps that are available and make sure we're looking at all of the risks.

Any allegation of foreign interference—whether that's China, Iran, Russia et cetera—is serious, and I have full faith that our intelligence agencies will pursue these matters without fear or prejudice. I will say that our national unity increases our national resilience against foreign interference efforts, so I think about the ways that we can unite people, build faith and restore democracy.

Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Concerns with TikTok are well known. Today TikTok is banned on most government issued devices at both the national and state level in the United States. It is also banned on government devices in the UK, New Zealand, Canada, the European Union bureaucracy and parliament and, indeed, in Denmark. Increasingly it's not just banned on devices but also blocked by wi-fi networks so it cannot even be accessed by a personal device in some sensitive locations. Dozens of United States universities and schools have banned TikTok access from their local wi-fi networks. But it is not yet banned on government issued devices in Australia. Indeed, it is not banned anywhere in Australia.

It is believed that TikTok has more than seven million users in Australia. Owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, it is subject to the laws of all Chinese resident companies, which includes the obligation to share information with the Chinese government contained in China's 2017 national intelligence law. We know that Australian data can be accessed in China, because TikTok admitted as much in a letter to shadow minister for cybersecurity Senator James Paterson almost 12 months ago.

Many are concerned about the risk posed by an app which does the following: TikTok checks the location of the device at least once an hour, and that location is not just Australia but a specific street location in a specific suburb in a specific city; it continuously requests access to contacts, even if the user originally denies that access; it maps all of the device's running applications and, indeed, all installed applications; it records every keystroke made within the app's browser; and it accesses the device's calendar and retrieves a list of everything available in any external storage folder. Felix Krause, a privacy and data security researcher, recently discovered that TikTok is running code that tracks and captures every single keystroke while you're in the browser. That means any searched term—and indeed passwords and credit card information—may be gleaned.

Those who've studied the app, its ownership and the known accessing of the data of various individuals, including journalists in the United States, describe TikTok in stark terms. Republican congressman Michael McCaul, chair of the US congressional committee on foreign affairs, described TikTok as 'a spy balloon in your phone'. It's important to look carefully at examples of TikTok's influence.

I cite the case of TikTok's behaviour when Russia invaded Ukraine. In a recent podcast interview, Mark Faddoul explained that, overnight, TikTok had created basically a separate version of itself just for Russia. How did they do this? They put in place an upload ban, meaning that people could not post new content at all and in particular they could not post content regarding the war that was unfolding in front of them. All international content was made inaccessible, so people on TikTok in Russia couldn't see the world's outrage at the war, nor any level of local resistance to it. However, despite that upload ban, certain Russian accounts were still able to continue to post, and that which was published overwhelmingly supported the pro-Kremlin content.

A similar set of observations and concerns were raised in relation to France's presidential elections, when divisive candidates got far greater airplay even though they got far fewer votes. Roughly 30 per cent of airplay was devoted to divisive candidates who got no more than seven per cent at the ballot box.

Social media and digital data expert Tristan Harris wrote of TikTok last September:

Imagine it's the Cold War in the 1960s, and imagine the Soviet Union put itself into position to run television programming for the entire western world, of more than a billion TV viewers. We would've never, in the west, let that happen during the Cold War. So while this might sound like science fiction, this is actually the world we're living in right now with TikTok being influenced by the Chinese Communist Party. TikTok is projected to have 1.8 billion users by the end of 2022. And a Pew research study just showed that TikTok is the most popular app for teens in the United States, who now spend more time watching and posting to TikTok than YouTube.

For the better part of a year, the coalition has been calling on the Albanese government to act on the national security risks associated with TikTok. It is not safe enough to be on the devices of any of our Five Eyes partners. I ask: why on earth does this government think it is safe enough here?

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are all sorts of types of motions that we debate in this place. There's one category of motion that I would class as bipartisan support of an issue. Then there's another class of motion, which might be detailed policy consideration of an issue. Then there's a third class of motion, which has been becoming more and more common in this place and in the main chamber. That's a motion of a category moved by the opposition. It's where the opposition puts a motion bemoaning, 'Why aren't you cleaning up the mess we left you faster?' That's a motion which acts as though there wasn't just a decade when nothing happened on a certain issue. Then, when the government has started taking action or has even in some cases completed that action, they bemoan the fact that it wasn't sooner or faster or better.

There is some common ground in this debate. There is quite a deal of common ground. I share a number of the concerns raised by the mover of the motion and by speakers on both sides of this chamber. There are some aspects of TikTok which I think are potentially positive, but there are many aspects of that app which are very worrying. It is highly addictive, as previous speakers have alluded to. Much of its content is inappropriate. It contains a great deal of misinformation, particularly on a range of political matters. There are, at times, issues relating to censorship. And of course, as a number of speakers in this debate have alluded to, there are issues relating to privacy. But what isn't common ground is when those opposite move beyond those kinds of observations.

I think we in this chamber all today care about national security, but then those opposite move from those observations to saying the government doesn't take this seriously or the government is sitting on its hands because it hasn't responded to a serious, detailed report in one day. Well, I remind this chamber of a serious report, an interim report, that was handed down in the previous term. The Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media was established in December 2019, and an important interim report was handed down in December 2021. I want to cite some of the findings of that report. A number of experts gave evidence to that report, and the evidence of a number of those experts was cited directly in that interim report:

Experts have been clear that what is required is a coordinated, cohesive response.

One of the experts said:

I think that what matters most is having a body that has the ability to look through multiple different sides of this problem …

That interim report noted there was no such body established by the coalition, notwithstanding the fact that this issue had been emerging since 2016—at the time of this report in December 2021, for many years. Secondly, it was found in this report:

Nor has the government developed a coordinated approach. The committee was concerned by the convoluted answer to a simple question—

to a number of different agencies—

who is in charge?

So in December 2021 it had been made clear that no-one was clearly in charge of this issue, which had been emerging for a number of years. Again, the interim report concluded:

The end result is that departments and officials are not across the work that is happening internally.

For example, the First Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet's National Security Division was unaware that the COVID-19 taskforce was undertaking work to combat online disinformation and misinformation:

Work was going on at one hand that the other hand didn't know about.

The platforms themselves were confused as well. Representatives from TikTok did not know if they were required to report any coordinated foreign interference attempts that they detected on their platform, let alone who they could even report this to.

Amazingly, even if these entities had wanted to report foreign interference, the government had not let anybody know who they should possibly report it to.

This was December 2021. This is a government that had been not handling an issue for a number of years, some six months before the election at which they were booted out. And virtually nothing happened in between that time and that election. So for those opposite to come in here and criticise the government for having constituted a serious report from Home Affairs and for taking the time to work through that report is, quite frankly, remarkable.

And look at the minister who is in fact looking at the report. If you want to look at who is actually kicking the goals in this space, the minister responsible was announced 2022 cybersecurity person of the year by Cybercrime Magazine. I don't have time in 15 seconds to go through the full citation of all of her achievements, but the rest of the world is saying, 'This government is taking action in this space.' Those opposite didn't for a decade, and yet they have the gall to come in here and move this motion.

Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.