Minister Shorten doorstop interview Canberra

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SUBJECTS: US election; Social media age limit.

JOURNALIST: Should we kick off with the news of the day. Social media. The social media companies are saying that a ban would do more harm than good. It could push kids into the, you know, dark regions of the web. What are you - what are you saying to that?

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS, AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: First and foremost, as a parent, I think it's fantastic. The National Cabinet today could set an age and give some guidance to families. Social media companies have been exploiting our kids for too long. Social media is great fun. It can work really well. It can be educational. It can provide connections to people who might be isolated. But there is a dark side of social media. And social media corporations have been basically monetizing our children for personal profit for too long, and they are unaccountable. And yet again, these global tech social media companies just sneer at the wishes of families and the wishes of national governments. So I think today has been a long time coming behalf of parents. The damage social media has done to kids needs to be called out and long last it is.

JOURNALIST: How does the government plan to enforce it?

SHORTEN: Well, first of all, we'll have the discussions at National Cabinet. I don't want to unveil everything that Minister Rowland, who has just been outstanding, and the Prime Minister are going to talk about today, but it's not about enforcing it on parents and kids. I think the platforms have the capability to do a lot better than they do. And really they have a duty of care. You know this argument- social media is a product. And this argument that somehow that there are just social media are just a hapless neutral bystander, and the impact of the product on people isn't good enough. To use a metaphor, we've told car companies that you have to put the seat belts in. We don't make passengers bring their own seat belts to the car. Product design and safety is best done by engineering the risks out, and the social media companies can do that. They just need to be told.

JOURNALIST: X and Snapchat have already said that they won't be enforcing this. Meta has said they won't be either. The onus is on the App Store. So what's the government's plan? Well.

SHORTEN: We don't panic or run up the white flag because some global corporation based in another continent says they don't care what Australians think. We do care what Australians think, and we do care that Australians are safe. There is a long history, 200 years long, of protecting our kids from exploitation. So the first thing you've got to do is do we think the kids are getting damaged and exploited by social media? Yes we do. And what we don't do is we don't say the problem is too hard. The kids and families have got to work it out on their own. Social media platforms are living in La La Land. If they think that there are not negative consequences of their products, they run algorithms to addict kids, to programs and to behaviours. So yeah, this is a long overdue reckoning. And social media have been making millions and billions and billions off our kids. The trade in data and they can afford to come to the party. We're not asking the local milk bar to introduce a whole lot of expensive regulations. Some of these corporations are the richest corporations in the world, and they scream like stuck pigs when someone says, "you've got to do something for someone else other than your own profits".

JOURNALIST: Just on a Trump presidency, the US Federal Reserve has again cut interest rates. Why are interest rates? The opposition argues that interest rates aren't coming down here because of government spending. You know, what do you say to that claim and why are they not?

SHORTEN: They're wrong. The reality is that there's two approaches to dealing with the cost of living crisis we've got now. The coalition are basically recession makers. They would cut, uh, lots of vital safety net matters for a recession. See, tens of thousands of jobs lost, and they'd say, see, operations are success. The patient died. We have taken a graduated path. We've seen wages move reasonably, but modestly. We've our cost of living relief are with energy. Uh, didn't cause inflation. We've had some tax cuts. What we want to do is create the circumstances where the reserve Bank says, yep, inflation's within that bandwidth of 2 to 3. We've been focused on fighting inflation. But we're getting there and we're getting there in a way I think which is um going to create long but long lasting stability in our economy. But it is very difficult for people at the moment. We get it. We're as keen as anyone else to see that downward pressure on inflation. But this argument that the opposition say is a bit sort of cheeky, really. They're very mischievous. The opposition, they say, oh, government spending is bad, but what are they talking about? Bulk billing. Are they talking about modest increases in the pension? That's what they're talking about. The reality is, since we've come in, we've delivered not one but two surpluses. The previous liberals, they call themselves the economic supermen of Australia. They left us with a deficit. We've had two surpluses, and that's exactly what the reserve Bank needs to see happening.

JOURNALIST: Trump is championing America First policy. How do you think Australia's ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd's, going to go after calling him a nutcase and one of the most destructive presidents in US history?

SHORTEN: Well, I think we need to look forward, not backwards. And about-the Australian ambassador to the US has been working night and day. I was really pleased that one of the first international leaders that President Trump spoke to was our own Prime Minister Albanese. So I think that shows he's working well in terms of comments in the past. Uh, I don't think anything in Australian politics is a patch. On what JD Vance said about President Trump in 2016. He called him an idiot and reprehensible. Now he's his vice president. So we're focused on the future. For me, the only thing that matters is the national interest. For Australians. That's what this government's focused on. I've got to run, guys. Thanks.