James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, it seems to be your view, based on these exchanges, that the existing arrangements are sufficient for guarding against the risk of foreign interference and influence in the upcoming referendum, although it's not clear to me how you could form that view, given you yourself have not sought or received any advice from our agencies about that risk. Therefore, you don't appear to be informed about it. It is, of course, this legislation itself that will contribute to and risk exacerbating the risk of foreign interference, because you have not allowed for official 'yes' and official 'no' campaigns.

The reason why that's important—and you might have known this if you'd met with the tech platforms to discuss this—is that the tech platforms have said to me that it would be very helpful for them to be able to point to official 'yes' and 'no' campaigns as authoritative sources of information if there is, in this political debate, conjecture about disinformation or misinformation which may or may not be driven by foreign states or other actors. How did you form the view that it wasn't necessary to have a 'yes' or 'no' case to ameliorate this risk if you didn't seek or receive briefings from our agencies and if you haven't met with tech platforms to discuss their point of view?