Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Bill 2021 will, if passed, see big overseas tech corporations pay Australian news media outlets for content appearing on their platforms. The purpose of the news media bargaining code is to level the playing field between news media and big tech when negotiating commercial agreements. The code was recommended by the consumer watchdog, the ACCC, after its inquiry into digital platforms in Australia.

Google and Facebook are gatekeepers of the internet. They are massive tech corporations which profit off ad revenue that used to support local and independent media. They also profit by harvesting, aggregating and selling data regarding their users. According to the ACCC, Google and Facebook generate more than $6 billion a year of advertising revenue in Australia—massive revenues, massive profits—but they pay little or no tax in our country. These big tech corporations monetise their audiences, ordinary Australians, by selling advertising alongside the news content that they aggregate and curate on their platforms. At the same time, they are collecting huge amounts of personal data from each user which is then monetised and used to better target future advertising at them. As Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, warned on the documentary The Social Dilemma: 'If you don't pay for the product, you are the product.'

Due to their virtual monopolies, news media have had no choice but to distribute their journalism via these big tech platforms. But let's not fall into the trap of seeing media moguls like Rupert Murdoch as a victim in all of this, because, just like Facebook controls much of Australia's online activity, News Corporation—tragically for this country—controls much of the Australian media.

The similarities don't end there: both are big corporations with offshore head offices that don't pay their fair share of tax in this country and their respective leaders, Mark Zuckerberg and Rupert Murdoch, have far too much influence over Australian policy and Australian politics. That is why the Greens have long called for the government to show courage and will to deal with media concentration and online ownership by implementing new tax measures funding public interest journalism and increasing media diversity. It's also why the Greens went into bat for the real underdogs being exploited by big tech—Australia's public media funded by Australian taxpayers as well as the AAP. We secured the inclusion of public broadcasters, the ABC and the SBS, in the code along with public funding to protect AAP in the short-term. These are important reforms but they are not the only reforms that we need to see in the digital space.

Tech giants have profited from a deregulated global market in which personal data is sold to the highest bidder. Australians are becoming more and more aware of how their personal and private data are being harvested and monetised by overseas big tech corporations. People are learning from everything from the Cambridge Analytica data scandal to documentary films like The Great Hack and The Social Dilemma. They have learnt, for example, about how Facebook has allowed itself to be weaponised by violent extremists and conspiracy theorists due to an algorithm that far too quickly leads far too many people to be swamped by conspiracy theories and exposed to the violent rhetoric of hate groups. Facebook's news feed can operate as a propaganda mill which facilitates the dissemination of vile racism and the incitement of violence. Never forget that Facebook live streamed the Christchurch massacre where large numbers of Muslim people, going about their peaceful daily prayers, were mowed down in cold blood by a white supremacist terrorist. It was live streamed on Facebook. Yet we allow Facebook's billionaire founder and CEO to determine what news millions of Australians are exposed to. What a time to be alive! What a world we live in!

Facebook also jumped into bed with Cambridge Analytica, a tech firm headed by a former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, which had worked with Brexit-leave campaigns. Cambridge Analytica harvested the Facebook profiles of millions of people and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence voting decisions and the ballot box. That assisted the campaigns of people like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, as well as the Brexit campaign. Apologising for this breach of trust caused by Facebook's role in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: 'We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you.' I can agree with him on that at least.

Then there's Google with its long history of monopolistic and antitrust behaviour and billions of dollars-worth of tax avoidance around the planet including here in Australia. Google has worked with US federal agencies—the NSA, the CIA and the FBI—to spy on private citizens. It has worked with governments to develop products with censored search results, for example, Dragonfly, a version of Google's search engine that complied with the Chinese Communist Party's demands to censor sensitive speech and comply with China's data provenance and surveillance laws. This is the same Chinese government responsible for humanitarian atrocities on the Uighur people, the death of democracy in Hong Kong and longstanding crimes against the people of Tibet. Google is also one of the single biggest invaders of personal privacy on the planet. Google tracks your movements, viewing and purchasing through its search engine, browser, audio, YouTube, Gmail and devices like mobile phones running Android operating systems and Google Maps. Google's former CEO, Mr Eric Schmidt, once said: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' That just shows Google doesn't get it. Wanting privacy is not the same as having something to hide. Anyone who thinks it is shouldn't be trusted with our personal data. This is from a company whose slogan used to be: 'Don't be evil'.

Australia has a Privacy Act but, in the digital world, it is clearly unfit for purpose. There is no greater contrast than between our Privacy Act 1988 and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force in 2018. The GDPR is considered the gold standard for the protection of consumer information. Whereas our Privacy Act provides very limited protection over personal information, the GDPR provides protection over 'any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person' who can be identified directly or indirectly by personal data.

The differences between the European regime and that here in Australia are born of basic philosophical differences—like the difference, for example, between neoliberalism on the one hand and civil libertarianism on the other. Unlike Australia's neoliberal approach, focused primarily on corporate profit and corporate greed—adhered to both by major parties in this place since it was turbocharged 40 years ago by the Australian Labor Party under Mr Hawke and Mr Keating and then built on and expanded even more rapidly by the arch neoliberals inside the LNP—the European regime takes a human rights approach, which is actually focused on people. What a refreshing change to see people focused on, rather than corporate profit and corporate greed.

Unlike Australia's Privacy Act, the GDPR applies to all organisations, regardless of location or size, who process or control any personal data of EU residents. It requires consent to be given for an organisation to process or control a resident's personal data, and it provides individual rights, such as the right to data portability, the right to object and the very important right to erasure, otherwise known as 'the right to be forgotten'.

The GDPR's regard for data protection as a fundamental right reflects data protection being a constitutionally enshrined right in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. But, unlike the EU—or every other liberal democracy in the world—Australia alone does not have a constitutionally or legislatively enshrined charter of rights. We need one desperately. We actually needed one long ago, because, as Justin Warren from Electronic Frontiers Australia has warned, you can't ever get privacy back.

We can't change the past, but we can change the future. We need to start legislating privacy protections now in this country. We need to stop the bleed and protect future generations from being exploited and monetised by big tech, like our generation has been. That's why I'll be moving a second reading amendment that calls on the government to implement data protections equivalent to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Ever since Cambridge Analytica, calls to nationalise social media and big tech have increased in frequency and force, and rightly so.

Colleagues, I ask you to come with me on this. Just imagine we had a publicly owned search engine which did not have to make a profit by selling our data and did not track people's online behaviour and which had an algorithm that prioritised accuracy rather than popularity. Just imagine we had a publicly owned social media platform, one which did not retain data, or perhaps one which did offer the option of retaining people's data but provided it only to the user so that a person could decide, if they wished to, to sell their data or to donate it to a research institution for the public good. Just imagine how much stronger our democracy would be. Just imagine how much stronger and more cohesive our society would be.

The problem we've got is that algorithms on platforms like Google, Facebook, and YouTube are driving the destruction of our very democracy. They are bastardising elections. They prioritise things that get a reaction over things that are factual and truthful. When we look back on this time, not only in our country's history but in our world's history, we will see abundant evidence that these algorithms, developed and kept secret by companies like Google, Facebook and YouTube, are responsible for so many of the evils and the challenges of our world today. We need to rein in big tech. We need to properly regulate big tech. We need to break up some of the monopolistic big tech companies. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the future of our democracy and our society depends on doing that.