CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Ms WATSON-BROWN (Ryan) (09:30): BHP is the world's largest mining company and Australia's largest company. They've made a staggering $91 billion in profit over the last 10 years, so why did they receive $622 million in fuel tax credits just in the last year? That is Australian taxpayers subsidising diesel for the world's largest mining company.
People are right to be really angry about this. BHP is one of many mining companies benefiting from generous fuel subsidies while everyday Australians have to pay full price. Meanwhile, the government has made huge cuts to public services in the budget, including cuts to the renewables transition.
Perhaps, instead of cutting funding for renewables, they should be looking at the billions of dollars in subsidies that we're giving to the mining sector every year. Speaking of big companies taking public money, Palantir—you might have heard of it. It was founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel.
Its business is AI data analytics, and it's enabling a huge expansion of the surveillance state through its technology with absolutely no democratic oversight. It is now worth a staggering $375 billion. This is not a politically neutral company.
They're very, very explicitly in favour of US military power and dominance over the rest of the world and have said that they have a duty to uphold that with their work. Palantir's clients include the US and Israeli militaries and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE. We know that they help develop AI generated 'kill lists' in places like Gaza, that they help track and deport immigrants from the US and that it was their AI targeting software that was responsible for the strike on the school in Iran that killed over a hundred children.
In Australia, Palantir's clients include the Department of Defence and the Australian Signals Directorate—and also Coles Supermarkets, to 'address workforce related spend'. They hold other contracts with the federal government and Australian states worth several hundred million dollars. How much of your data do they have access to?
How can we be confident that data is secure when Palantir has explicitly said they will serve the interests of the US military? Switzerland rejected the use of Palantir after an internal risk assessment because they couldn't be confident about data security. We should be doing the same here in Australia.
Instead, during questioning in Senate estimates this week by Senator David Shoebridge, the government refused to answer whether Australian biometric data would be safe from Palantir. We simply should not be trusting them with our data.