Interview with Natalie Barr - Sunrise, Channel Seven

NATALIE BARR, HOST: One of Australia's largest childcare providers has outright banned class photos, with Goodstart Early Learning saying the risk of images being manipulated is just too high and beyond their control. It comes after the eSafety Commissioner warned all Australian schools to reconsider the need to share pictures and videos of students online, where they can be run through artificial intelligence to generate deep fake and often sexualised content.

Let's bring in Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth and National Senate Leader Bridget McKenzie. Good morning to both of you. Amanda, schools share photos of kids all the time.

They have for many, many years now, but now experts are saying that is just too risky. So should policies be reviewed so images of children are never posted online? AMANDA RISHWORTH, MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS: Well, of course, it is really, really concerning to hear things like teachers and students being- nudify apps being used and to be exploited online.

So it is incredibly concerning, and obviously the government’s taking action to ban such apps, and so that's really important. Obviously, the eSafety Commissioner is providing advice, and people have to have a look very carefully at that advice. But ultimately, the responsibility needs to be on these companies, and that's what the duty of care is about, making sure that these tech companies are taking action to not harm people online.

And so there needs to be a big step up in responsibility of these technology companies to do the right thing. NATALIE BARR: Do you think we should really leave it to the tech companies? I don't know how much luck we're having with them doing anything at the moment, though.

AMANDA RISHWORTH: Well, we will be legislating a duty of care, and so there will be fines if they don't comply. But ultimately, the responsibility- we need to get them to do their job. Placing this responsibility on parents and schools is a very difficult one, and obviously schools and childcare centres will take steps, and the eSafety Commission is providing really important advice, and it’s really shows, I think, challenging times we're in when it comes to abuse online, but the government is taking action.

The duty of care is a priority for the government will be really important in holding these tech companies to account if they don't do the right thing. NATALIE BARR: Okay, Bridget, what do we do here? You've got Goodstart Early Learning, they've got lots of childcare centres.

They are taking a lead here and basically banning all photos. Where does that leave other childcare centres, all schools, all old photos of students that are online? BRIDGET MCKENZIE, NATIONALS SENATE LEADER: Exactly right, Nat.

And I think this is the sort of the challenge of negotiating this new online and now AI environment, not just for tech companies or governments, but I would argue for parents. And you’re seeing increasingly your parents are refusing to share their child’s facial images online, on their social media accounts, et cetera. They blur them out or put an emoji over the top to sort of protect their own child's identity until the child is old enough to have their own sort of consent to sharing their images online.

So yes, that's an issue for businesses, but ultimately identity theft, whether it's going to be used for sexual exploitation material, or indeed financial and other areas that identity theft can be used on, how your image is used online is something that parents and particularly older students need to be very careful. Because once you are online, it's there forever, and I think we now have a generation of young people and parents who are much more conscious of the negative impacts of that than maybe 10 years ago.

NATALIE BARR: Exactly. Moving on, the Reserve Bank Governor has warned Aussie families that more rate hikes may soon be on the way, saying underlying inflation is above the target and the board is ready to act and increase rates if needed. Amanda, if rates go up again, they will be at the highest level since 2011.

That seems a long time ago. So can you be doing more to bring inflation down? AMANDA RISHWORTH: Well, first I would say the decision is for the independent board, but we are doing what is in our power to support Australians when it comes to cost of living, when it comes to be responsible, when it comes to the budget and improve productivity.

Of course this budget that we recently had had many measures to boost Australia’s productivity. We’ve seen investment in skills like permanent free TAFE. These are all measures to support productivity in our economy.

We recognise that productivity has been a challenge for a long time. That's why we're addressing it. So our government is looking at doing what we can, but of course there have been global headwinds.

We know that there have been difficult global circumstances, we know that inflation is and was running higher than we'd liked, and that's why we're doing what we can as a government. NATALIE BARR: Yeah, and yet inflation is going up and productivity not going anywhere. Bridget, what would you do?

BRIDGET MCKENZIE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you've seen in the polls, Australians know our country's heading in the wrong direction. Five budgets, Amanda, no reduction in spending, a trillion dollar worth of debt and inflation, which hurts the poorest the most above the band that the Reserve Bank- government needs to see it.

You're not cutting spending, you're taxing Australians, and small businesses are going under. So we- you don't have an economic plan to address this, and that's leaving it to the Reserve Bank to use a very blunt instrument for an interest rate rise while Australians' living standards are literally the biggest drop in living standards in the developed world. That's the reality of your lack of an economic plan.

So we would be cutting wasteful spending, getting tax changes to make sure Australians can keep more of what they want. AMANDA RISHWORTH: Medicare? Would that be Medicare?

BRIDGET MCKENZIE: No, Amanda, and we've made that really clear, so stop your scare campaign. AMANDA RISHWORTH: Well, what is it? You haven’t said what you’re going to cut.

BRIDGET MCKENZIE: Your lack of economic management credentials is embarrassing … AMANDA RISHWORTH: You haven’t said what you’re going to cut. BRIDGET MCKENZIE: … and it's everyday Australians that are actually feeling the pain. NATALIE BARR: What are you going to cut, Bridget?

BRIDGET MCKENZIE: Amanda, I listen to you respectfully, and I'd appreciate the same. NATALIE BARR: We’ve got to go. Any ideas what you would cut, Bridget?

BRIDGET MCKENZIE: Well, we would be putting Australians first when it comes to our immigration intake. We wouldn't be spending social service money on hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, we would be getting the NDIS under control and making sure that we're not funding CFMEU publicly funded infrastructure projects. That's just a start.

NATALIE BARR: Okay, there you go. You've both had a say. We'll see you next week.

Thank you very much.