Interview with Stephanie Ferrier, News Breakfast, ABC
Subjects: domestic and family violence, Digital Duty of Care, triple‑zero system, Intergenerational Report, immigration, AI productivity and safeguards Stephanie Ferrier: Treasurer Jim Chalmers joins us now from Canberra. Thanks for joining us, Treasurer. Jim Chalmers: Thanks for having me back on.
We’ll come to the Intergenerational Report in just a moment, but first, we’ve seen another shocking night with a young boy shot in the face and neck. This follows a really horrific weekend of violence across New South Wales. What’s your response to the increased level of violence, particularly aimed at women and children?
It’s absolutely horrific. I think the weekend’s events and the events overnight have been heartbreaking for everyone involved, all of the loved ones of these women and the young boy overnight. As a dad of an 11‑year‑old boy I can only imagine the heartbreak for his loved ones.
As I understand it, my latest information is he is in a critical condition and so we all hope that he pulls through. Obviously, there’s a legal process under way now that we can’t get into in any detail. But our hearts go out to the loved ones of everyone impacted by violence, including the little fellow who was shot overnight.
Definitely, I completely agree with you there. But campaigners are stepping up their calls for a national Royal Commission into violence against women and children as a result of this and many other instances of deaths that have really blighted the nation. Would the government entertain this?
We’ve chosen instead to increase the resourcing for child and family violence, domestic violence. We do acknowledge that this has a number of sources, and we’re trying to deal with the sources of all of this violence, whether it be more security in the housing system, whether it be the monetised misogyny that we see online. There are a whole range of factors feeding in here and so I’ll work very closely with Tanya Plibersek and Katy Gallagher and other colleagues, the Prime Minister of course, to make sure that we’re doing the best we can.
We do acknowledge that all of this violence is obviously entirely unacceptable, it’s horrific in every way. That’s why we’ve increased the resources and that’s why we all need to do better to do everything we can to make a difference here. We’ve also got new research today that details the shocking level of abuse that women actually suffer on dating apps as well, with 99 per cent of heterosexual women who use dating apps experiencing abuse in the past 3 months.
This is something that campaigners are calling to be addressed in the digital duty of care laws. Is that something the government can look at as well? In short, yes.
That online harassment is unacceptable in every form. Again, we have seen unfortunately the prevalence, the increase in the misogyny that breeds this kind of behaviour, in many cases monetised misogyny, as I said. The Digital Duty of Care will cover dating apps as I understand it.
We’ve done some consultation, I think that consultation has just closed and so we’ll be looking to legislate ideally this year. But as I understand it, dating apps will be covered by the Digital Duty of Care and that’s a really important step that we can take. If you look right across the board, whether it’s AI broadly, our efforts for young people and social media and now the Digital Duty of Care, this is about protecting people online, whether it be dating apps or in other ways, and that’s what the Digital Duty of Care’s all about.
Just before we move on to the Intergenerational Report, a quick question about the Senate Committee’s recommendation into nationalising the 000 system. What would the government’s response to this be? We’ll go through the Committee’s recommendations in the usual way.
I think we received them yesterday and when committees do this kind of work we are grateful for it. We go through it in detail, we don’t frequently respond to it immediately. We have taken some very substantial steps when it comes to 000.
We legislated the 000 Custodian, we’ve got the ACMA investigation which has become a court process when it comes to the Optus outage, we’ve increased the penalties for telcos who don’t follow the rules in the 000 system. So we have already taken extremely serious action. Obviously, the most important thing here is that Australians can access 000 when they need it, often at the very worst times.
We’ve worked very hard to strengthen the 000 system and we’ll consider any further steps in that light. Treasurer, you’ve obviously given a very detailed look at the economic forecast for the country’s next 40 years and one of the big issues is immigration. You’ve said that that is important to shore up our labour supply as our population ages and fertility rates decline.
However, today there are Newspoll results which show that two‑thirds of voters, including 44 per cent of Labor voters, actually want to reduce immigration. How do you convince voters out there to get on board with your plans? We are reducing net overseas migration.
It’s actually come down almost 50 per cent from its peak. After COVID, under our predecessors, it began to absolutely surge. We’ve got it down almost 50 per cent since the peak a few years ago, down towards more normal levels, and that’s really important.
We have taken a more active role in managing net overseas migration down from those peak levels that we saw when net overseas migration was surging in 2022. Beyond that, we recognise and I recognise – the Intergenerational Report certainly makes it clear – that migration can be a force for good in our country and in our economy so long as it’s well managed, robustly and transparently managed.
That’s why the tighter controls, the transparency, the robustness at the core of the migration reforms that Tony Burke announced last week are so important. Migration can be a force for good if it’s managed in our national interest. We have managed the numbers down quite considerably, down towards more normal levels.
There’s always more work to do that. But the alternative – Is that enough, Treasurer? Because clearly there are concerns among voters and how do you actually get them on board to agree that we need these people for our economy?
Yes, we don’t lightly dismiss the legitimate concerns that people raise with us from time to time. It’s not an illegitimate thing for people to debate the proper level of migration in our country and in our economy. But it is equally true that we do need some skilled migration to supplement, not replace, the training of Australian workers for opportunities.
It is an economic fact that if you go down the path proposed by our opponents, that would be diabolical for our economy. We need to be able to recognise that as well. This government is managing migration numbers down quite considerably.
That is a good thing, but we need a robust, well managed migration system and that’s what we are delivering under the reforms that we announced last week. We’re almost running out of time, Treasurer, but just very briefly. You say AI gives us an opportunity to make our economy more competitive, more productive, but only if we do a good job of managing the risks.
We’ve obviously got the Prime Minister talking about global guardrails. How do you manage those risks to ensure that we can boost productivity? These global guardrails are absolutely key, and being part of, I think, around 20 nations signing up to stronger controls on AI is a very good thing for Australia and a very good thing for the world.
This is about higher standards. It’s about more safety. It’s about independent evaluation.
These are all the ways that we make the AI technological revolution work for us, not against us. It is game-changing technology. It will transform every element of our society and our economy, and we can maximise the opportunities from AI only if we minimise and manage the risks, and that’s what this really important statement that the PM signed us up to overnight is all about.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers, thanks very much for your time. Thank you, Steph.