Minister Plibersek interview on ABC Melbourne

E&OE TRANSCRIPT TOPICS: Death penalty, Digital Duty of Care, Manosphere RAF EPSTEIN, HOST: To deal with and talk about these issues, we're joined by Tanya Plibersek, Minister for Social Services and part of Anthony Albanese's Federal Cabinet. Good morning. TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Hi, Raf, how are you?

EPSTEIN: I'm good. Thank you for joining us. Can you stop the big tech companies?

Will they listen if the PM says please don't show it? MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I think there's a lot of uncertainty right now about exactly how we would prevent this being shown on social media. It is a very difficult issue.

We, of course, absolutely oppose the death penalty wherever it is, whoever's subject to it. And the idea that someone being put to death would be broadcast, I think adds to the absolute abhorrence of the death penalty itself. The proposal is that this would go ahead in December and there's plenty of things that could happen between now and December.

It's not even clear that the President of the United States supports the broadcasting of this shocking event. So, I think we need to take a little bit of time and deal with this sensibly. But truly, the idea that watching someone killed on the Internet would somehow be acceptable.

I think most Australians would just be shocked to see such material on their feeds. EPSTEIN: Is it worth trying even if you fail? Like, I guess this extends to a whole lot of things with these companies.

They're in our lives, we have almost no influence on them. Is it worth the Federal Government saying please don't even if you fail? MINISTER PLIBERSEK: 100%.

I think the very strong message from our government to the social media companies is please don't broadcast it. I mean, that would be the simplest and best way of reducing people's exposure to this is that the big tech companies actually refuse to broadcast it. The truth is that we haven't had great response from big tech when we've asked them to behave more responsibly in the past.

And it's one of the reasons that the eSafety commissioner has asked us to double penalties for big tech when they're doing the wrong thing. It's one of the reasons that we've got a digital duty of care bill about to be introduced into the Parliament. We have safety standards for washing machines, cars, kids, toys, food, medicines.

But we don't have safety standards for something that is as pervasive as social media and the Internet in our lives. It is because the big tech bros have been confusing the issue of safety with the issue of free speech for too long. But the simple truth is these companies are making billions and billions of dollars by exploiting our kids and feeding us stuff that is really contributing to things like sexual violence in our community.

EPSTEIN: Tanya Plibersek's the Social Services Minister. I'll come to a pretty interesting post she had on Instagram on a social media platform about misogyny in a moment. But Tanya Plibersek, before I come to that, are you powerless as a government?

I'm not asking that in a pejorative sense. It's just, I mean, I know OpenAI is worth the entire Australian economy, like they're literally worth 2 trillion Australian dollars. Is the government powerless?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we're certainly not powerless, but I think what you're saying, Raf, is a good reminder of why it would be in our national interest for the digital duty of care bill that's about to go into the Parliament to be something that is bipartisan and broadly supported by members across the political spectrum. Because this is not restricting what adults say online.

EPSTEIN: The opposition says that's what it's about. MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, well, that's not true. It's about actually three pretty simple things.

It's about making sure that our kids are protected, that we get illegal content off platforms. And then it's about giving Australians choice about their algorithms. At the moment, big tech decides what you see.

You don't decide what you see. You get fed stuff based on an algorithm. So, a young man, a boy, an account mimicking a boy is set up and within 23 minutes that account is fed misogynistic content online.

Kids aren't choosing to see strangulation in their social media feeds, they're being fed it and that's translating into real world harms. We've seen an explosion of sexual violence, particularly teen on teen sexual violence. It is no coincidence that so much of it involves strangulation.

There's no safe way of strangling people. That's being fed to them through pornography and through social media and it's having real world consequences. That's just one example of the harms that we're talking about.

The other sort of things that we're trying to protect kids from is eating disorder material, stuff that feeds an eating disorder, stuff that feeds illegal acts, criminal acts. We're trying to protect children from online bullying that has caused too many, like even children, young children, to take their own lives because they can't escape it. And now we're seeing through games, through chatbots, really sophisticated products that have completely inadequate safety standards attached to them.

You can't buy food in Australia that doesn't meet Australian safety standards, but you can see stuff that is damaging our kids. EPSTEIN: Minister, if I can dive in, if I can dive in. I think people feel powerless and I think they are frustrated with how much power maybe you're flexing or how much power you do or don't have.

But if I can just return to something before I come to people's calls. And just a reminder, we're speaking to Tanya Plibersek, Federal Minister in the federal Labor government. Let's just lean into the some of the content, Minister.

The new ABC show Manosphere. Mark Fennell spoke to some construction workers. It might be worth playing a bit of this.

Those workers are big fans of someone called Andrew Tate. Just have a listen to what some of those construction workers said on Manosphere, State of Man. *AUDIO GRAB*: Each industry started getting woman dominated, women dominated, like maybe 50, 50, whatever, like still there's a lot of women in offices now, but now they're trying to take construction as well.

What's going to be left for men? Why is there such an attack on men? You know, it's a full attack on men.

EPSTEIN: I played you that, Minister, because that's not a, that's a common sentiment. How do you tackle that? MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think the important thing to say in response to that is that women's equality does not come at the expense of men.

Gender equality frees men and women. Gender equality is good for women because it gives us economic security and independence that means we can support ourselves. It means we have more choice in life about the type of work we do, the type of relationships we have.

That's true for men, too. Gender equality is freeing for men. It allows them to, you know, work in areas that traditionally aren't male areas.

It allows them to have the benefit of better balancing work and caring responsibilities. It allows men to be free of restrictive gender stereotypes as well. And I think one of the problems with the way gender equality is presented to young men today is that it's a zero sum game.

If women do better, men do worse. It's not true. If women do better, men do better, too.

They have more equal, caring, loving, satisfying relationships. They don't have to be the breadwinner if they don't want to. There's no pressure on them.

EPSTEIN: Do you think you could persuade those construction workers with those arguments? MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I don't know if I can because no one wants to listen to their mum talking to them about what sort of relationship they should have. But I think their partners could.

And I think this is the really great opportunity we have when we talk about gender equality. My teenage son showed me this thing that turned up in his feed. It was footage of a woman pouring bleach on the jeans of men who are man spreading on a subway.

And he showed me this and he said, don't you think feminism's gone too far, Mum? Like, isn't this crazy. So, we did a little investigation, and guess what?

The footage was produced in a Russian film studio with links to the Kremlin. Comes out around the time of the MeToo movement. Gender wars are being driven by the sort of bot factories and big tech trying to monetise the manosphere.

This is not accidental. It's not a big change in society that's showing up in social media. It's a big change driven by social media for dollars.

Andrew Tate has made, and lost, a fortune with something he calls his PhD, his pimping hoe’s degree, which is a course that you can sign up to, you pay thousands of dollars to to monetise the sexual abuse of women. There's extensive very interesting stories written about the Tate brothers and their operations in Eastern Europe. The way they have monetized the manosphere exploits young men as well as exploiting young women.

They're not interested in male liberation or gender equality that supports young men and gives them a sense of meaning. They're interested in making a buck. And I think the more we uncover that, the more that we talk about gender equality as equality, it's not women beating men or men beating women in the race.

It's about freedom for men and women, the better. EPSTEIN: Thanks for your time this morning. MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Pleasure to talk to you, Raf.