THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
MONDAY 1 DECEMBER 2025

Topics: Technology-facilitated abuse; social media age restriction; mums in parliament.

MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES, TANYA PLIBERSEK:  Well, thanks very much for coming out this morning. We're discussing the very important issue of technology-facilitated abuse today, and the most recent advice from the eSafety Commissioner. A lot of this information sounds like science fiction. Cars that track you, refrigerators that lock remotely and won't let you get food when you need it, video cameras on cat feeders that track who's in a home. Of course, these devices are very convenient, and I'm the first person to use an air tag on the keys that I normally lose, but when there's family or domestic violence or sexual violence, technology-facilitated abuse can be insidious and damaging and dangerous.

I'm very grateful to the eSafety Commissioner for the information that she's published most recently to advise victims of family, domestic and sexual violence, of the measures they can take to protect themselves against technology-facilitated abuse. And I think it's very important that people who are planning to leave a violent relationship in particular have the opportunity of step by step advice on safety planning to avoid this type of technology-facilitated abuse.

I have to say it's also really important that the companies that are making these products consider safety by design. They have to embed safety principles in these devices before they sell them. We've seen over time, a lot of technology-facilitated abuse identified, and then sometimes it takes years to fix up the abuse that's occurring. 

One of the examples was when abusers were making regular, small transfers to bank accounts, when they were paying child support, for example, and sending threatening and abusive messages with each small transfer of funds. Well, the banks stepped up eventually, and they made it possible to block this sort of messaging. It's important that we don't wait for months or years before a problem is identified, before safety features are embedded into the devices. So yes, these new technologies are very convenient when things are going well, but we do need the companies that are making the products to consider before they market and sell them. What happens when this technology is used for harm, not goo.  I'm going to hand over to the eSafety Commissioner now, and we'll do questions at the end. Thanks.

ESAFETY COMMISSIONER, JULIE INMAN GRANT:  Thank you, Minister, so much for your leadership. We know that technology can be used as both a tool and a weapon. We want it to be a lifeline for women. But throughout the course of eSafety's 10 years, we have been consistently training frontline workers because we know that technology-facilitated coerceive control is almost ubiquitous in family, domestic and sexual violence situations. So with the generosity of DSS, we have stood up the world's first national Technology-Facilitated Abuse Service. We've had 20,000 frontline workers utilise our self help hub, where we have technology audits and updates beyond the cat feeders and the refrigerators, a perpetrator can use a lime bike.

And today we're talking about smart cars, because they are essentially computers on wheels today, and we don't want them to become weapons on wheels. By 2031, 90% of all cars sold in Australia will have telematics systems. They already have GPS you can remotely control or lock or start the car. You can prevent an EV, for instance, from being charged. And these are the types of things we're hearing from domestic frontline workers are happening to Australian women today. So we're here, we've worked with about 400 domestic frontline workers for really complex cases. Why a woman or her children are being gaslit, cannot figure out why her ex partner knows where she is, and we've pretty much seen everything under the sun, including children used as pawns in the surveillance of their own custodial parent. And this can happen through the gifting of iPads or iPhones with spyware on them, a new gaming system with a camera that shows who the mother might have as a guest in her home.

So again, we want technology to be a tool and a lifeline, not as a vector of abuse. And so we continue to provide service to the broader public, and today, we put out an Online Safety Advisory, specifically around smart cars. We have done a number of these around coercive control and changing attitudes of young men, around romantic relationships where they think that they should be able to have the passwords of their partners, they should be able to expect immediate responses to phone calls and texts, and we need to change these attitudes and make sure that we're keeping people safe with the technology that we use every day. Thank you.

DOMESTIC, FAMILY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE COMMISSIONER, MICAELA CRONIN:  I want to thank the Minister for her leadership in this time, Minister Plibersek has shown extraordinary leadership in the 16 days of activism, I want to acknowledge Julian Inman Grant is Australia's first eSafety Commissioner. Julie has established the eSafety Commission, and it's a world first. Australia is very lucky that we have this service, because we all know how fast the world is changing around us and how every new bit of technology, every new as Julie described, everything in our lives now is a computer on wheels, on our wrist, in our pocket, and what we know is that we have very high rates of domestic, family and sexual violence in this country, in the world, and that those tools are being weaponised against people. It's often weaponised before people even know that it's happening to them, and it's often really insidious, because it is something that is being described as for your safety, or because I care about you, I'm tracking you, I want to know where you are, I want to be able to keep you safe. What often happens that is that women feel absolutely women and children and young people feel gaslit that they feel unsafe. They know that this is being used in a way that is not about their care. It is about causing them harm, and what we need is for greater education and understanding about how tools are weaponised. It is harm. Online tech harm is real harm, and actually can lead to very serious physical harm. It's not one or the other. Tech-facilitated abuse is often used in concert with other forms of coercive control, domestic, family and sexual violence.

We're very fortunate to have the eSafety Commission's tools and resources, because for the workforce, this is something that is constantly changing around them, and that they need to be able to provide the support to women and young people and children anybody experiencing domestic, family and sexual violence. They need to understand the way that those products, services are being weaponised, and to work with organisations and businesses to help make them to help think through safety by design principles.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CRISIS SERVICE CEO, SUE WEBECK:  We are chronically being sold products that are supposed to enable us to take control of our lives, turn our lights on before we get home, be able to locate our car in the car park. Be able to follow our children when we're concerned about their safety, but when we're marketed as being able to take control of our lives, what is also being marketed is a tool that can be used by people who are using violence against their partners, or former partners, to take a position of power and control over the people that they have been using violence against. There are many ways that technology enables us to live our lives easier and quicker and with more capability.

However, on the frontline we are responding to people who are deeply concerned about their safety, at incredible risk from the behaviours being used by people that are using violence against them, that are insidious, in their homes because of the amount of connectedness that people have to internet enabled devices and therefore nefarious use of those of somebody having access to passwords or shared apps or shared location through delivery of products or the like, can dramatically change somebody's experience of safety and put them at risk, even if they do relocate.

So not only do we have to work to respond to those who are whose safety is impacted by this, we also need to be working to ensure that those who are using violence in our community have the opportunity to build safe and respectful relationships with technology in the way that they navigate that in their lives as well, and that includes needing to work with children and young people to build healthy expectations about how the internet enabled devices may support them living their lives but not put them at risk or at harm's way, particularly in the way that they use that technology with their peers, and then maybe translate later to a level of acceptability of what they will tolerate from people that they're in intimate partner relationships with. So it's not just about victim survivors and safety by design right now. It's looking further along as well and thinking about, how do we build safe and respectful relationships with the technology that's being sold to us.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Okay, any questions?

JOURNALIST: One for perhaps Commissioner Cronin. There are a lot of concerns about technology and the future. Would it be fair to say that we are still in a better place than we were, say, 20,30 years ago or is this [inaudible].

COMMISSIONER CRONIN: Can you expand on that question?

JOURNALIST:  Well, I mean in terms of when we look at the state of women's safety [inaudible].

COMMISSIONER CRONIN: What I would say is that we are a long way from where we were. We have come a long way. We're not where we need to be. There is still, there is still a lot of work to be done. There are a lot of areas where we are seeing some gradual improvements in women and children and young people's safety. There are some other areas where we are not and one of the issues about technology-facilitated abuse is that it's new and it's emerging, and we need to be able to keep adapting as things change.

JOURNALIST: Is there any idea or statistics on what percentage of domestic violence situations are being facilitated through technology?

COMMISSIONER INMAN GRANT: Even five years it was 99.3% so virtually, virtually ubiquitous. These were WESNET numbers, but it's the people from the frontlines who are seeing it on a daily basis, and the people that are coming to us who are already overwhelmed. And in answer to your question, I would say that, what technology-facilitated coercive does it layers on additional elements of harm. There are a lot of people who still don't consider digital harm real harm. And what makes it particularly insidious is a woman, even if they're separated from their partner, cannot escape it. And the speed and velocity when you get 500 abusive texts a day, that is, you know, you're constantly it's a load, right. It's also the covertness which makes it very difficult. So if a woman goes to the police and says, I'm getting these menacing texts,  the constable sees a flame emoji, well, that means hotness, well, it means something very different when a former partner has threatened to burn down the family home, that is a threat. So that's what makes it again, insidious. It happens quickly, but it's also covert, but it's also a red flag for further escalation of violence, including femicide. So, and we've been saying this for years, it often happens you start to see the explosion of technology-facilitated abuse when there's a major change in the relationship, there's the actual separation, a woman has a child and spends less time, gets a new job, whatever it is, this is a red flag. There's an element of desperation to it, where the man wants to still get to the woman or her children and show them that he is still in control.

JOURNALIST:  Members of the rapid review panel into the prevention of violence against women and children said that they’re frustrated with the states and territories on what they say is inaction on changing regulation on alcohol delivery, how satisfied are you [inaudible]?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK:  Look I think it's plain that alcohol, illicit drug use and gambling are all contributing factors to family and domestic violence. They're not the cause of it, but they can certainly exacerbate family and domestic violence, and it's really important that states and territories actually behave responsibly around alcohol availability. We've seen some progress. The ACT in particular is taking steps forward at the moment, South Australia has draft legislation. We've also seen some concerning steps backwards, and I'd say the Northern Territory in particular, making alcohol cheaper and available in areas where there currently aren't liquor licences, I would say that's a really concerning step backwards.

The Commonwealth Government's put a million dollars into the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education to have FARE lead a national approach to alcohol standards with the states and territories, and we do need to take alcohol and other drugs seriously when it comes to domestic violence and make sure that we are reducing the harm that alcohol does as a contributing factor to family and domestic violence.

JOURNALIST: What do you make of the Tasmanian Government's review saying they want to cut red tape around alcohol?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I think any common sense and all of the research tells us that alcohol doesn't cause domestic violence, but it can contribute to and exacerbate domestic, family and sexual violence. It's really important that states and territories that have primary responsibility for licencing and other alcohol controls take this issue seriously.

JOURNALIST: Ms Plibersek, is the government considering additional guidelines for companies for marketing and selling these devices that are being used as coercive control, and Ms Inman Grant, are we keeping a track of which devices are most commonly used?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'll hand over to the eSafety Commissioner again in a minute, but I'll just say this, it is very difficult to legislate as fast as these innovations are occurring, so it is very important that companies themselves build this consideration into the design of their products. If we are waiting for a year or two years after harms become apparent, before the government can do something about it, countless people have already been harmed by that product. We know that companies can do better if they consider the unintended uses of these products. A lot of these products are fantastically convenient, like I say, I love having a tag on my keys so I'm not searching through the house for them every time I misplace them. It is the unintended use of these for surveillance and abuse that is particularly insidious and harmful. So companies need to consider, if they're selling a tracking device, for example, how to make it obvious that you are being tracked using that device, and how you switch off that tracking capability in the device if you want to switch it off.  I'll hand over to the eSafety Commissioner.

COMMISSIONER INMAN GRANT: That's absolutely right. Safety by design has to be fundamental, and there are examples of General Motors and Rivian in the US, allowing users to put on ghost mode so that their location can't be tracked. This isn't actually a new form of weaponisation. There was a case in San Francisco with Tesla X in 2016 where a man kept threatening a woman to bludgeon her with a metal baseball bat, and she came into her car one day and that baseball bat was in the back of the seat. So she went to Tesla to try and figure out what was happening with the telematics. And because his name was on the ownership document they wouldn't turn off the system. That's actually resulted in a piece of legislation in California that would require the car manufacturers to turn off certain data analytics, GPS and telematics setting within two days of a victim receiving but as the Minister said, that's reactive.

Another thing that government's duty of care will be considering is putting the burden back onto the platforms themselves to assess risk and potential harms and to embed and build in the safety protections at the front end or to even allow them to switch it off. The problem with smart cars and geofencing and kill switches is, it's a fairly sophisticated use of technology, and a woman might not know what's happening to her. She might think she's running out of gas or running out of power, and this is why we set up the Technology Facilitated Abuse Service. Part of what we've done with some of the 400 very complex layered cases is we've gone through and talked them through all the different devices, what they're experiencing, and we try and help them workshop how they put their settings on at the highest setting. I'd also note, if you go to our website, we have a technology audit section. Even a Lime Bike can be misused to track someone.

So we saw from the Lilie James coroner's report last week, her murderer had been tracking her through Snap Maps, but with an earlier girlfriend to show a grand gesture, because she likes chocolate gelato, he used Uber Eats to send her gelato, not really to give her the ice cream, but because if you send gelato, somebody has to be there to receive it. So really, what he was doing was checking that she was home. And so it's not just technology, it's the services and the programs that we're using every day, which is why the Rapid Review also recommended safety by design be applied to programs and projects as well, so we don't have another Robodebt so that we're actually thinking about how these government automated systems can be prevented from causing harm.

JOURNALIST:  Are we seeing a collaborative attitude from businesses at least?

COMMISSIONER INMAN GRANT:  Well, I'm meeting with Toyota this week, where we're talking, of course, to our own department that has the Australian design codes under their policy remit. So, you know, I, think, yes, when we started safety by design as initiative in 2018 I made the conscious decision that we would do this with the technology industry, rather than to them, because we know we needed their buy in. I met with Discord last week, they've set up a new safety by design team, TikTok has a safety by design team, and match.com does so the more we see this routinised and sort of built into company structures, that this is the way that they're going to design, deploy and then develop these technologies, that's a good thing. But the truth is, just like the initial seat belt had to be voted on by parliaments all over the globe to be embedded, we may need to see a second seat belt moment for car manufacturers now that these are becoming more like computers than the traditional engines that we've always used.

JOURNALIST:  Just on the social media ban, there's a new report from QUT researchers that say young people feel unsupported in the transition off platforms. What do you have to say to this and what more will you be doing to support young people coming off those platforms?

COMMISSIONER INMAN GRANT:  Well, young people have been a huge focus for us. We have a Youth Advisory Council that was even involved in trying to shape the legislation. We have a statement on children's digital rights in terms of how we're rolling this out. We did deep consultation with young people across all age ranges as we were thinking through our regulatory guidance. And we have a wealth of information that was co designed by young people on our social media age restrictions hub. I've been going out with my minister, Anika Wells, speaking to schools. We're doing everything we can to reach young people. And as part of our regulatory guidance, we have asked companies to compassionately and kindly, sort of convey to young people how they plan to deactivate or move their accounts and give them choices. We've seen Meta, Snap and Kick do that. We are expecting the same from TikTok this week. Again, this needs to be compassionate and kind, because it's going to be a huge transition for some young people. We recognise that, and we've got a lot of supporting materials for educators and parents as well.

JOURNALIST:  Just on that Commissioner can I ask as you mention, TikTok will put out its guidance, there’s still other platforms that haven’t, YouTube for instance, other platforms on the list, are you concerned they’ve waited sort of to the last minute to give that guidance to youths about what they should expect in terms of the age verification software but also how they can archive their content and that sort of thing. Is it concerning they’ve left it so late?

COMMISSIONER INMAN GRANT: Yeah, well, we've got all of that information esafety.gov.au. It's disappointing. We gave the companies, we suggested the best time frame was two weeks in advance. My powers don't come into effect until December 10th, and that's when we'll start gathering information notices. We've been working on compliance plans. We've been engaging, we've been telling companies what best practice is. Again, we've been talking to them for over a year. So this should be a surprise to none of them, but there's nothing I can do, from a regulatory perspective, to light a fire under them only that this is the right thing to do to their young users that are going to be deplatformed.

JOURNALIST: There are apps popping up that young people are sharing to get around them, how quickly can you keep up with this technology? Are you just basically going to be playing a game of whack-a-mole?

COMMISSIONER INMAN GRANT: Well, actually, we've been very proactive about that. We watched what American kids did when TikTok went blank. They went to RedNote, they went to Lemonade, which is an Instagram clone. We've been talking to the likes of Yubo, which is a French site that is age verified all of its user base twice, Bluesky and others. So we're talking to them about we expect that there will be some migration, and some of these will become age restricted social media platforms. We don't think we're going to totally turn off the spigot. We will be watching the migratory patterns, and we'll be talking to these companies. Some of that's going to happen inevitably, but that's what teenagers do. So again, it's not going to be perfect, but the normative change in the mid to long term will be significant.

JOURNALIST: Commissioner on December 27 search engines will have to verify age, do you would have an update on how you intend them to do that and the Opposition is suggesting this is a step towards digital ID, what's your response to that?

COMMISSIONER INMAN GRANT: Well, that's just completely incorrect. What the search engine codes will do, which were developed by the search engines themselves, will blur violent pornography and explicit violence, say like the Charlie Kirk assassination when you're searching for that kind of content on the internet. This is to prevent the incidental and accidental seeing of content you can't unsee, particularly for children. And we know that 30% of under thirteens see pornography for the first time is through using a search engine. Now if you're logged into a search engine, say you're using a Google account, and a lot of families do because they want to have different profiles. And you're searching the internet with a logged in account, and you haven't been age verified, yes, that will happen. But if you decide to use a Mozilla or a DuckDuckGo or Google, for instance, without the account, nothing will happen other than the blurring.

The other thing that's really important about these search codes, if someone is in extreme distress and they're looking for specific information about how to take their lives, rather than taking them to a lethal method site, it will refer them to a mental health support so that they can get the support they need. These are good for kids. These are good for society. They ask a small inconvenience for people for blurring or you can go right through. And for those that want to do it through a logged in experience, they may be asked to age verify. Age verification has been happening in Australia on search engines since 2021 so this isn't really new. It's just codifying current best practices.

JOURNALIST:  Can I might just go back to one of your comments earlier on tech-facilitated abuse and you mentioned the seat belt kind of moment. Do you think that particularly for cars that there could be legislation introduced to protect people from it being used?

COMMISSIONER INMAN GRANT:  I mean, that's a question for government. Minister Plibersek, used the example of the AirTag, and just when they came out, I thought the same thing, this is great. I'm losing things, or my luggage is being lost. I wrote to Apple, and I said, hey, this could be great convenience, but this could be a really insidious surveillance device. What kind of safety by design interventions did you take? And they said, nothing, we're about privacy, not about safety. But it was these AirTags being put in wheel rims of cars and in linings of purses and under floor boards that made them realise this had become a tool of surveillance. They got together with Google to their great credit, and now, two years later, if there's a Bluetooth or other device that you're not aware of, you'll get a Bluetooth notification that there is something tracking you. So that's good. But why weren't they thinking about this in April 2023 when it was released? This is kind of a call to action for the car manufacturers, some of them, like I said, Tesla, has known about these risks since 2016. I'm not sure whether or not they've built in safety protections or other ways to override it, but like I said, 90% of cars sold here will be totally interconnected and will have advanced telematics systems, GPS and ways to remotely stall or open locks and doors. This is a safety issue, and it needs to apply wherever interactive technology or internet technology can be weaponised.

JOURNALIST:  Minister you've obviously been in parliament for a very long time and for a long time you were one of very few that had young children. What’s it like particularly post election seeing so many more women in parliament with young children making it work and has that changed the culture around here?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK:  Yeah, I think it's so wonderful to see so many young mums and dads as members of parliament. I think our parliament is a much better, stronger, more representative Parliament when you've got people of different ages, gender balance, different backgrounds, religions, ethnic backgrounds, different professional backgrounds. The more diverse the parliament is, the better the decisions we make. And yeah, it was not easy back in the day, being one of the few people who had kids, I sometimes felt like it was like having an affair. I had to sneak off and see my kids. But now we've got the childcare centre here in Parliament. I think it's a really wonderful thing for members of parliament, male and female, and for the staff of the parliament, very importantly, for the long hours that they work, to be able to have workplace childcare. At the end of the day, when we make decisions like cheaper childcare and three days guaranteed childcare, extended paid parental leave, making it easier for sole parents to stay at home with their kids until the youngest child turns 14. I mean, these decisions are absolutely influenced by the lived experience of the parents in the place. Thank you so much.

ENDS