THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISON INTERVIEW
SUNRISE
MONDAY, 20 MAY 2024
SUBJECTS: Social media age limit, Newspoll, Budget.
NATALIE BARR: The Prime Minister has backed imposing age limits for children accessing social media sites. Anthony Albanese has thrown his support behind kids under 16 being restricted from having an account up from the current age of 13, acknowledging parents are worried sick about what their kids are seeing online.
It follows the Treasurer allocating $6.5 million to trial age verifying technology. But experts warn that could mean every Australian being forced to show their licence to prove their age.
For more we're joined by Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, and Nationals MP, Barnaby Joyce. Morning to both of you.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Morning.
BARR: Tanya, how would the Government police under 16s from having social media accounts?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, that's the very reason we have to do this $6.5 million trial. We need to make sure that we've got the age settings right and that the technology supports that.
But Nat, like, you know the social media companies, if they wanted to do it, they could probably do it tomorrow. You think about the way they target ads at you, they understand everything about your buying patterns, they certainly are targeting things that are age appropriate; I'm getting plenty of sensible shoes targeting me, in my ad stream. I know they could do it if they wanted to.
And that's the reason that so many of the State Premiers have joined with the Prime Minister and said, "We need to do better.” As parents I think we are really worried about our kids. You don't want to be, you know, your kids are telling you that you're the only parent who's making them turn the phone off, you're the only parent who's putting restrictions on this.
But if we all got together and said 16 is the right age, well, that takes all of the worry away from parents. They can say, "Not now, not yet, not for a few years." And that's better for kids' mental health, and it also deals with things like pornography. Like the average first age of seeing pornography in Australia today is 10 years old. Can you imagine what that is doing to young people and their relationships? It's just not good.
BARR: Yeah. It's a particular problem with boys, as we know; that's been documented. Barnaby, does it need more than just putting your licence in, because I mean, as most parents of teenagers know, fake licences are easy to come by. So this age verification technology, which is up and running in some countries overseas, can't we work on that?
BARNABY JOYCE: Well, I think – look, I'm pretty much in a unity ticket with Tanya on this – I think that boys seeing pornography at a really young age and girls being attacked on their weight and being targeted so that it encourages eating disorders, both of those, it's just wrong; they're evil in many cases.
BARR: Yeah.
JOYCE: So we've got to do something about them. And you know, for me, it's boxing, the weather and people arguing against swindle factories. This floods my media feed, because they know that's what I'm interested in.
BARR: Yeah.
JOYCE: And for kids, of course, once they get themselves on the hook with, you know, pornography, that's what they're going to get, and the algorithm's going to send it to them, and this is not how you help – how people treat women, this is how you help people demean women, and for girls, this is how you take them down an evil path which can end up in hospital with anorexia, and I've seen that up close.
BARR: And it's not just all this really terrible stuff, it's just them being on social media for several hours a day and the addiction and what that does, talk to any teacher –
JOYCE: Yeah.
BARR: – they're coming to school tired, falling asleep, all wired, so how do we –
JOYCE: Yeah, dead right.
BARR: Yeah, how do we get them off the stuff?
JOYCE: We bought two electric motorbikes to get the boys at six and five off the iPad and out into the paddock and riding round, I mean they go maximum 12 kilometres an hour, but that's better than sitting on an iPad.
BARR: Yeah. We all have – I mean, you know, us as parents need to do more, but we need a bit of help here, 'cause, you know, lots of people are in despair.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, exactly.
BARR: Moving on. The Treasurer's third Budget has not received overwhelming support. This morning's Newspoll shows just 27 per cent of people surveyed believe the Budget will be good for the economy. Despite this the Government has increased its two party preferred lead over the Opposition. It's up to 52 to 48 while support for Anthony Albanese has improved. He's leading Peter Dutton, 52 to 33 as better PM.
Tanya, are you happy with that; the Budget not so well received, although better than the last ones, and then Albo's gone up and so has the Government.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, well, that's terrific, but of course we're not focused on the polls, we're focused on helping people with the cost of living, and that's why this Budget will give every Australian taxpayer a tax cut of around $1,900 a year on average, it's why we've put the $300 energy rebate in there, it's why we've wiped $3 billion of student debt, it's why we've increased Commonwealth Rent Assistance by a quarter since coming to government, it's why we're helping people on pensions keep more of their pension money, it's why we've got fee free TAFE, it's why we've got cheaper medicines.
We are absolutely focused on bringing down inflation and helping with the cost of living. This Budget does both of those things, and that's how, you know, that's why we're focused on it.
BARR: Barnaby, when you've got voters not really believing that the Coalition would have delivered a better budget, are you concerned by that?
JOYCE: Well, we're the Opposition, and of course people are going to focus on the Government that delivers the Opposition, and the people who focus on the Government that delivers the Opposition have said this is not really an authentic dealing with the underlying problems of cost of living; intermittent power, your so-called renewables and your swindle factories, so-called wind power, are not delivering cheaper power prices, they're putting up the price of power, and that flows through everything; the cost of living, the household costs, the grocery costs and, of course, you know, the polls are fluctuating, but the longer Mr Albanese spends in the country and helps them a little bit, there's no doubt about that, and yeah, well, when we see the election, it's going to be a very, very tight run thing.
But people are – it doesn't matter how much Tanya says, "Oh, we're dealing with the cost of living," that really just annoys people, 'cause they say, "Well, you're not dealing with it when I pay the groceries, and you're not dealing with it when I pay my power bill" –
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: What's your plan for cost of living?
JOYCE: – "and you're not dealing with it when I pay for my fuel."
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: What's your plan then?
JOYCE: Well, straight away, we're not going to have this insane desire, cult ish desire, cult-like desire to turn the whole world, have Australia running on windmills. It's just insane. And whilst you're stuck with that cult –
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: That's not a plan, that's a whinge.
JOYCE: – the cost of living's going to continue to go through the roof.
BARR: Okay. Well, look, thank you –
JOYCE: Oh, mate, that's what you're doing.
BARR: – you've both had your say, but we've always got next week. That's the beauty of it. Thank you very much.
END
