THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS WITH LAURA JAYES
MONDAY 1 DECEMBER 2025

TOPICS: 16 DAYS OF ACTIVISM AGAINST GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE; TECHNOLOGY-FACILITATED ABUSE.

LAURA JAYES: Welcome back. Well, alongside the eSafety Commissioner, Tanya Plibersek has just launched 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based violence. And I'm happy to say the Social Services Minister joins me in the studio. Tanya, thanks so much for your time. Why now and what is exactly this 16 days of action?

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Oh, well, 16 days of action is something that is acknowledged internationally as a time to focus on ending gender-based violence. And I was very happy to stand up today with the eSafety Commissioner and the Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence Commissioner as well, and talk about a particularly insidious form of abuse, which is technology-facilitated abuse. The eSafety Commissioner has published some terrific resources on her website and trained a whole lot of frontline workers because a whole lot of these, like new tech things that we take for granted as being really convenient have actually been weaponised by perpetrators of family and domestic violence to harass, intimidate, stalk, follow, even locate to attack victims, former partners, partners or former partners of the abuser. And so the example that the eSafety Commissioner was really focusing on today are cars. You can obviously, if you've got one of these cars that's connected to the internet, a former partner can track your location, lock and unlock doors, activate horns, change the temperature and that can be really frightening. We even heard of one woman whose ex-partner was mates with the mechanic and the mechanic installed a kill switch on her car so she couldn't really get, she could drop the kids to school, she could get to the local shops, but she couldn't really get beyond that. The car just kept conking out when she went, you know, more than a couple of kilometres away from home. We even heard of things like cat feeders having cameras activated remotely so an ex can see who's in the house. Kids being given gaming consoles with cameras so again, the ex can be watching what's going on in the home. Obviously, telephones have often had tracking devices installed. Kids being given iPads so that the ex can spy on mum. It is really quite alarming. And so these new resources that the eSafety Commission has got are really well worth checking out. But the message is also to the companies that are making these products that they have to think about how they can be misused. I mean, they're very convenient, they're great in most circumstances, but you have to build in a sort of, sort of safety fallback in case they're being misused like this.

JAYES: So, what is the, without having been onto the website apologies, what is the best advice because often, I mean you can't have, well, you're not going to stop kids from having these gaming consoles, but often with these devices they come with tracking and things like that. So, what is the best advice for some of these more normal things if you like?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, well, look, for most people they're just convenient features that you can love or live with. If you are leaving a violent relationship, that is the most dangerous time for a woman just before or just after she's leaving a violent relationship. And that's the time when you really need to go step by step through how you switch off the tracking and cameras and so on, on the devices. And the eSafety Commissioner's got a terrific resource. She's also seen the training of around 20,000 staff of refuges and other support services who can help you do that safety planning in a really methodical, step by step way. And honestly, most people who turn up to a refuge with the tracking activated on their phone or something don't even know they're being tracked. So taking those steps is really important. You know, an ex can track you based on where your UberEats is being delivered to or where your online shopping's being delivered to, or they can listen into you on your, you know, your home, sort of, you know, like your Google home or Apple home devices and so on. They can switch on the microphone. It's very hard when you're in a really stressful position of a relationship breakdown to think about all of those things. So, having this sort of like online help, step by step guide to keeping yourself safe I think is a really valuable contribution.

JAYES: Yeah, I think so too. Because not all of these things would meet the threshold of, you know, the police being called or there being a crime being committed. Obviously the kill switch with the mechanic, that's a whole different story, surely.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, that was a real shocker. And there's examples like another example was a US example, a Californian example, where a fellow had tracked one of these cars with tracking enabled, tracked his partner, opened the car remotely and left a metal baseball bat in the back seat. Now he'd been threatening to beat her to death with a metal baseball bat. So you can imagine how threatening it is to turn up when you think you're safe and you think you've escaped and see that someone's not just let himself into the car, but left the weapon that he's threatened to kill you with in the backseat. Another example the eSafety commissioner gave was, you know, if someone's been threatening to burn the house down with you and the kids in the house, sending you flame emojis. Like you can show a flame emoji to the police and they say, what are you worried about? That means you're hot. No, well, it means something quite different if you've had those sorts of threats made to you. So, it is a very insidious form of abuse. But there is help available both to frontline workers who are advising women how to stay safe at this incredibly difficult and dangerous time, and to people themselves who might want to do a bit of safety planning.

JAYES: Just quickly, Minister, where do we go for this? Even if it's not the website, is it the eSafety Commissioner's website?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: The eSafety Commissioner's website, yep.

JAYES: Okay.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Absolutely.

JAYES: We'll track that down for our viewers as well. Thank you so much for your time.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Appreciate it. Thank you, Laura.

ENDS