 Hi, my name is Johanna Weaver and I'm the Director of the Tech Policy Design Centre at the Australian National University. I'm also the host of the Talking Tech Policy podcast, which we're going to be launching with this conversation. As we're meeting here today at Parliament House, it seems particularly poignant to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet the Nga Wa people. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging and I extend that respect to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who are tuning in today. Minister, thank you very much for giving us your time. We're here with Minister Fletcher, the Minister for Communication, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts. Thank you very much for being here. Very pleased to be here. So when we agreed to do this interview, it was a few weeks back and we agreed to interview you to talk about your book, Governing in the Internet Age. And of course, there's a lot happening in your portfolio at the moment. So it's particularly a great time to have the conversation and we will get into some of the recent announcements, including around the Troll legislation and the inquiry into Big Tech that the government announced yesterday. But before we do that, I wanted us to take a step back and contextualise the period of change that we've had because I think everybody that works in this house knows and understands how difficult governing is full stop. But in the context of governing around technologies and the technologies are not new anymore, I think it's fair to say, but comparative to many of the other issues, we don't have the same amount of precedent and experience. So when I was asked to write something for the Monash University Press Series in the national interest, I thought about what I wanted to write about and decided that the growth of the Internet and what it meant for government would be an interesting topic, particularly because it's now frighteningly 25 years since I first got involved in this space when I started working for then communications minister Richard Alston. I'd recently come back from the US where I'd done an MBA and over that time the Internet, at that point it was just emerging, so when I left Australia there was certainly no retail Internet service providers. There was also no subscription television, almost nobody had a mobile phone, but it was the start of a period of great change and that really accelerated very, very quickly. And so the Internet, of course now, as I chart in the book, is a commonplace part of life and billions of people around the world are connected, but that's really only happened over about 25 years. Certainly if you take the period within which the Internet has gone from being a tool used by a relatively small number of researchers and academics to becoming a mass market phenomenon. So I thought it was interesting to kind of, I guess, try and look at that period and just make some observations about what that has meant for government. Yeah. And can I ask, because I do love to ask this question because it puts it in context for the individual, what was your first interaction with a computer or the first time you heard and used the Internet? Because I think when we reflect on those personal stories it helps to realise how far we've come in such a short period of time. Well, I point to a couple of things. Firstly, my dad was an academic. He finished his career as Professor of Computational Engineering at UNSW. So we always had around the house stacks of computer paper and programming cards and so on going back to the sort of late 60s, early 70s, remember a couple of science projects, which nominally I did, but he largely did, on a computer. Then probably when I got to business school, I took a class called Management of Media Information and Communications, which really opened my eyes to the whole sector. And the professor who taught the class was talking a lot about this thing called the Internet, which I'd never really heard of before. And we had to go and do some basic exercises, you know, file transfer protocol and gopher. So that was kind of 93, 94. So that probably started to open my eyes a bit to it. But certainly there was no, at that stage, there were no browsers. So you still needed to use some rudimentary computing language to be able to access the Internet. And of course, that all changed very, very quickly. And that's one of the factors that was obviously key in the Internet then becoming a mass market consumer phenomenon. Absolutely. And if you think 1993 was when the World Wide Web, as we know, it was unleashed upon the world. And so it really isn't that long ago. And without wanting to date myself too much, I think I am part of one of the only generation, one of the last generations, at least in Australia, that can experience life before, remember life before the Internet and life after the Internet. So at the Tech Policy Design Centre, the key focus of our mission is how do we get more people engaged in conversations around technology policy. And I think as the Minister for Communications, it's not actually always a given that the Minister has deep expertise in their portfolio. And that certainly is the case for you having been a ministerial advisor, parliamentary secretary, also having worked in at Optus for corporate regulatory affairs. So with the expertise that you bring to this field, can you explain to someone without a particular deep expertise in tech policy and someone who doesn't work in the tech industry? Why are these issues important to the average Australia? And why should they be focused and concerned or advocating on these issues? I think tech policy issues are enormously important because of the way they underpin the lives that almost all of us lead. The ACCC reported that Facebook has over 17 million Australians who use it every month and in its digital platforms review and over 19 million Australians use Google every month. So first of all, these are very widely used services. Secondly, and I spent a bit of time talking about this in the book, from the point of view of all of us as consumers, the internet has given us many, many options we didn't have before. And I argue that's even more so for a relatively small economy like Australia compared to big economies like the US or big countries in Europe or Asia. And so the choices that it gives you as a consumer on things like being able to instantly get information about different interest rates when you're looking for a mortgage, that was just in practical terms impossible 30 years ago. So I think these tech policy issues are important because of the benefits the internet can deliver. But then what are the business models under which it's delivered? And so the digital platforms inquiry, which led to amongst other things, the news media bargaining code, which we legislated earlier this year, was looking at the market power of Google and Facebook. One of the things that's happened with the internet is that it's been the basis for very large businesses, global businesses. And there's been a tendency for one business to dominate in a particular category. And it's argued that that's a consequence of, I guess, the economic characteristics of internet businesses, increasing returns to scale. So the bigger you get, the lower your costs are, and therefore the harder it is for anybody to compete with you. And that is why search is dominated by Google. It's why, you know, Amazon has such a dominant position in e-commerce and so on. That raises a lot of public policy questions. We've always, or for a long time, governments have been interested in the question of market power, you know, what the US, what in the US is called anti-trust and what here is called competition law. And ultimately, what does that mean about the prices of which we can purchase services? So I think those are some reasons to be why Australia should be concerned about technology policy, but also then things like privacy, security, safety. The internet has become, and particularly social media platforms, have become the digital town square, where so many of us interact. Now, we take for granted that if we interact in the physical town square, that if something goes wrong, we can go to the police. We can, you know, if we're assaulted or if we're defrauded, we can go to the courts. And people naturally assume the same protections are available to them when they interact in the digital town square. But it's more complicated. And one of the reasons it's more complicated is that the platforms are giant global businesses operating in 150 plus countries. So one of the questions is, which countries laws apply and how do governments require these global businesses to comply with the laws of your country when operating in your country? So let's talk about some of the measures that the government has implemented to look at how we can engage in the online town square, if you like. And I think the most topical one at the moment is the legislation or the draft bill that was introduced or released yesterday around tackling anonymous online trolling. And that legislation, in your book, you talk about governments gaining more confidence to legislate. And I think that is unequivocally the case, that we are seeing more confidence. What I'm interested in and the focus of the work that we're doing at the Tech Policy Design Centre is to look at our governments being effective in their regulation now. Because I think step one, let's admit that we should be regulating. Step two, let's regulate in a way that achieves its objective. So you use the example of cars and seatbelts and the evolution of regulatory technology. Cars didn't have seatbelts to begin with, then regulators stepped in. In the case of seatbelts, there's a clear evidence that seatbelts saves lives. With anonymous online trolling, has the government got or do you have evidence that the anonymity online and unmasking of anonymous trolls will actually lead to less of that behavior, that anonymity will actually help us to reduce it? Look, I think there's ample evidence that online harassment, bullying, abuse has very detrimental consequences, including mental health consequences. Sadly, they've been instances of suicides and so on. One of the principles we've sought to apply is regulating just enough. So with our news media bargaining code, which we legislated earlier this year, that was dealing with the problem of content, news media content, generated and paid for by Australian news media businesses like Seven West Media or Nine Detainment Limited. That costs money, costs money to employ journalists and editors and so on. And yet the public policy problem was that that content was being used by the digital platforms as part of their very successful process of attracting eyeballs to their sites, monetizing those and so on. But they weren't paying for it and there wasn't the normal commercial transaction that would occur. What we did was set up strong incentives for the platforms to commercially negotiate. And that has worked and indeed there have been, I think, some 14 or 15 deals done by Google. So creating the incentive for the commercial deals. Now, if we go to the legislation that we released an exposure draft of yesterday, the anti-trolling legislation, the primary framework that that's dealing with is the question of defamation. So it's the law is well established that if I write in a newspaper or say on television or radio, you know, that Paul Fletcher is a lying scoundrel and make other comments that are damaging to the reputation of a person, then the person who has been the subject of those comments has a right to sue indeformation and then the law is well established as to whether a case is made out and so on. That same right should be available wherever the defamatory comments made, whether they're made online as well. But there are major practical barriers to commencing legal action at the moment. At the same time, we've seen a significant increase in the volume of people complaining about these issues because the Internet has given many more people voice, a proportion of the comments that are made will be problematic, including a proportion will be defamatory. So the aim is fundamentally to create strong incentives for the platforms to set up a complaint scheme under which if I consider I've been defined by somebody who said something online, I can go to the platform and say connect me with that person, give them the opportunity to take it down or alternatively give them the opportunity to ask them to release their contact details so that I can commence legal action against them should I choose to do that and then there will also be a power for the federal courts to issue an order requiring the disclosure information. So what we're trying to do again is regulate just enough. We want to create strong incentives for the platforms so in turn they can put in place an efficient complaint scheme. So I understand that you want to regulate just enough and also that the behaviour there is I think very few people in Australia who would want to see this type of behaviour continue. No one is saying the behaviour of trolls is acceptable. But I guess the question is will the removing anonymity actually achieve the objective? And I use here the example of in Korea. So back in 2012 the Koreans introduced similar legislation and actually the Korean courts ended up overruling that legislation on the basis that it actually there was no demonstrable impact of that of the removing anonymity on reducing that type of malicious online behaviour. So I guess it's more a question of does is the target of anonymity actually going to achieve the objective that you're setting here? I would define the target as being making, not allowing people to make comments online with impunity beyond beyond the reach of normal legal and regulatory safeguards that have long existed. And I also make the point that this is part of a suite of laws. And earlier this year we passed the online safety act that will come into effect in January next year. That deals with serious cyber abuse of adults. And it complements the scheme we already have in place for cyber willing of children. It's a pretty high threshold there. So that if a if something if an online statement would be considered by a reasonable person to be menacing, harassing or offensive and intended to cause harm. So quite a high threshold. But if it meets that threshold, the eSafety Commission can determine that it is cyber bullying material, cyber abuse material directed at an Australian adult and directed it be taken down. So the point is that's one part of a framework to deal with unacceptable material online. And then another part of the framework we're now adding in is to deal with the issue of defamation. So not necessarily proposing, constituting a direct threat to somebody, but attacking somebody's reputation and at least giving people in practical terms the opportunity to should they choose to seek redress. So anonymity is one of the practical hurdles today, which means that the normal recourse to the law of defamation that is available in practical terms today, it's quite hard to access when it comes to comments made online. So I would really like to drill down a little bit more on the way that this new law will interact with the eSafety provisions. But before we do that and one of the other aspects of this new legislation that's been introduced, it was in part a response to the High Court case involving Vola, which had the result being that people who have social media pages become responsible for different different defamatory comments made on those pages, whether or not you made them and whether or not you knew they were there. And this legislation is saying, well, now the platform will be responsible for that defamatory comment rather than me as the owner of the Facebook page, for example. One of the concerns that I've seen about that provision, whilst it's great that there's certainty that individual users of platforms are not going to be held liable for comments that they're not making themselves, that it might disincentivise people to do content moderation, that it may actually end up that whilst the objective is to reduce this type of unacceptable behaviour and trolling, that actually it will result in less content moderation because we've moved the burden. What do you say in response to that? Well, you're right to say that part of what this bill does is respond to the law as it was set out in the High Court case in Voila, which said if you have a Facebook page, whether you're an ordinary citizen or a business and a third party makes a comment on that, which is defamatory, you are liable and our policy judgment is that's not the right allocation of liability. So what this bill will do, should it pass into law, is that the prima facie liability will sit with the social media platform. But what it then says is there's a set of mechanisms to deal with if you have a complaint scheme, if you disclose user identity information when it's sought to commence proceedings, then you can avoid that liability. Now, it really comes down to the question of who is who is best placed to manage these issues and the platforms clearly have a technological capability that individual users do not. It's their business model, their best place to identify how to manage these risks. And so that's really the judgment that we've made. I mean, I make the point, it's perfectly possible for the platforms in their terms of use to say to people who have a page, well, you know, these will be your responsibilities. So there's again, what we're trying to do is regulate just enough. The act or the bill sets out clearly what we want to achieve. But much of the operational detail is going to be a question for the platforms and there may be many different ways of achieving it. So I think my skepticism about the efficacy of anonymity aside, I would like to acknowledge the fact that in order to unmask people that will require a court order. And I think that is an important safeguard that is reflected in this legislation. So I think it's being fair on in all of my commentary. The last question I have about this one is it's interesting and you mentioned this in your book about states having responsibility for defamation in Australia. And so just to confirm that you're framing this as a bill or legislation if it is to pass that will that is focused around social media platforms rather than defamation because it is an interesting constitutional needle you're weaving there. Look, the substantive law of defamation is not changed by this. You know, there's a whole series of judgments that the courts make on the facts of a particular case as to whether it is defamatory, you know, truth, public interest, all these considerations come into it. We're not changing any of that. The majority of defamation cases are heard in state and territory courts. We don't expect that to change. What this does do, it would establish a set of processes or mechanisms to commence a defamation action and it also gives very strong incentives for the platforms to set up a complaints mechanism which, if it works as we hope it will, will mean that cases that otherwise might get a court could be resolved more quickly and efficiently. OK, and let's move on and talk a little bit about the e-safety legislation that passed in, particularly around the adult cyberbullying provision, which is the the fundamentally new aspect of that legislation. And my question is how and you have touched on this a little how that legislation will interact with the legislation around unmasking trolls, which I think is actually a bit of a misnomer because not all trolling behaviour is defamatory, for example. But the question I have is how often do you think the this new law would be used if it were to be passed in comparison to the cyberbullying? And when you put them side by side, the cyberbullying does seem to it has a lower burden, so it's you're not requiring defamation, which is so the the barrier to entry, if you like, is less. The you go through the e-safety commissioner rather than through a court and it's a 24 hour period, which is something that is new in that legislation as opposed to a long drawn out court process. It's free as opposed to as opposed to defamation, which is costly. So do you think that this legislation, putting aside its the effectiveness around anonymity, do you think it will actually be used when we have such a strong new legislation in cyberbullying? I recognise the irony of sort of critiquing one proposal by saying how strong something else that you have introduced is. There are certainly going to be online comments or posts which could potentially attract both pieces of legislation but the principal difference between them in my view is that the bar to be able to access the cyberbullying provisions is quite high. It needs to be material that a reasonable person would consider menacing, harassing or offensive and intended to cause harm. So it's very much about a comment directed at an individual that would be concluded to have a particular intent. There will be material which is a comment about somebody which potentially is defamatory but which does not meet the test of intended to cause harm. I mean, think about an online restaurant review and as we know over the years, restaurant reviews have from time to time caused actions in defamation. So you know, if somebody posts you know, I went to that cafe Paul Fletcher is running, it's hopeless. The Blake obviously can't cook to save his life. That would not be, you know, menacing, harassing or offensive intended to cause harm but there would be a question as to whether if I was you know, as the subject of a comment whether I felt that had done sufficient damage to my reputation and I wanted to take action in defamation. So there's potentially some overlap but I think the adult cyberbullying provisions as I say, there's quite a high threshold and it really is about intended to cause harm and that a reasonable person would conclude it was intended to cause harm. So when you describe those thresholds, I mean I think defamation is a cause of action that is of course available but there's a high cost bar of getting involved in that. The threshold as you describe it with the cyberbullying is quite high. Do you think there's more to be done just in terms of social norms that will perhaps have more effect than regulation and legislation in addressing the type of behaviour that you're talking about? Look, I think it needs to be tackled on several fronts. One of the reasons that we're talking about anonymity is because there is a perception that what you do online is anonymous and so you can say and do things that you would never say to somebody face to face. Now, I accept the proposition that there are certainly trolls who are quite happy to have their identity known and it seems to be part of their motivation but there is I think good evidence that we also see people engaging in pretty abusive commentary online because they think they're protected by a cloak of anonymity. So one of the things we want to do is improve the norms of behaviour and as well as the anti-trolling legislation in the online safety act the safety commissioner has been given powers to require the platforms to provide the identity information they have about a user account. So and that might well be used for example if there was somebody who was engaging in systematic abuse and the objective was to identify that person and perhaps pursue that, pursue penalties which the safety commissioner has the power to issue as a means of helping communicate to the broader community we'll look, don't assume you're anonymous online because that's very often not the case. And are you concerned of the privacy implications or the security of the information that is going to be collected either for this legislation or for the online safety legislation? Look, there's absolutely a balance when it comes to issues of privacy and security and clearly there are circumstances where it would not be desirable that somebody's identity be revealed. That's why as you rightly point out under the draft legislation it would require a court order and they'll be in need to balance up these considerations or through the voluntary complaint scheme it would require the consent of the person who posted the material. Similarly, when it comes to the safety commissioner's powers again as a regulator she'll be in a position, Julian McGrathory safety commissioner, her staff will be in a position to weigh up those issues. So yes these things absolutely do need to be weighed up. And I thought it was interesting looking at the legislation yesterday that the information that you're requiring and this is the anonymous Troll legislation is name, phone numbers and email address which is largely information that many people would give to a platform provider anyway. And in the Korean case actually the legislation resulted in a massive data breach and that was part of the concern around that legislation. And I personally was comforted a little to see that the requested information was relatively narrow but I do note that there's provision there for that to be expanded via legislative rules which does raise a few concerns that it may be expanded over time. And I suppose the point I'd make is that again as we consult on the detail we can work through all of these issues including for example part of the question is okay what information do you need to commence legal action? And that's the thing that the courts can rule on or that we can determine through legislation what the courts then apply. And if the comment or post that you're seeking to make the subject of defamation action has been made online by a user then the holder of a user account then the capacity to commence legal process to serve the commencing documents if you can use those online tools then arguably you don't need some of the other things like physical address and so on that historically the courts have used. So those are all issues to be worked on. Yeah, and I think they're very important issues. Likewise, I think with respect to the evidence about how much of the trolling behavior is actually anonymous. There's quite a lot of research that that behavior a lot of anonymous that most of the malicious trolling behavior is actually people under their real name. So I'll be very interested to see how that progresses. Let's move on to another element of the e-safety legislation and particularly the provisions around the basic online safety expectations. This is happening as a subset along with the development of industry codes. One of the things that perhaps has been most topical about that legislation or that direction sorry that's sitting underneath is the reference there to encryption and I know this is something that has been a strong criticism of the Morrison government is your approach to encryption. You mentioned it briefly in the book and I think if we were to sum up the main criticism of it it's that the approach to encryption seems to be the bad guys use encryption. We need it to prevent access to child pornography or terrorist behaviors. Therefore we need this legislation and there are many who would say that actually encryption also has a very important purpose in our societies including for example to underpin our financial systems the banks wouldn't work without encryption. So how do you respond to that criticism and are you also in the same token concerned that some countries outside of Australia would be watching what we're doing around encryption or anonymity and those countries might not have the same human rights protections or respect for rule of law and how you balance that in the global environment which is something you also touch on. So the idea behind the basic online safety expectations is that the parliament through the Minister for Communications on behalf of the Australian people is saying to the platforms these are the things that we expect you will do and we ask you to report against them and there are penalties for failing to report and it's things like having an easy to use complaints system and I guess a range of other things that we would say based upon the collective experience particularly of the E-Safety Commissioner in dealing with platforms. As new platforms emerge TikTok came along only three or four years ago for example now very, very popular there'll be others. These are the things we expect you to do and it's intended to be quite a practical workable document and I would say I actually commend you on that document I think it is a very useful document to set the expectations for the platforms but I guess my question is more specifically on the encryption point because part of those documents were saying that these expectations apply also to encrypted communications and that's an interesting if it's encrypted how are the platforms to? Well again we're looking at it through a safety lens so if you're a teenager in an online chat group bit WhatsApp or whatever the service is and there are abusive comments directed at you seen by 50 or 100 people in the group I guess the basic point we're making is it's not good enough to say oh it's encrypted so you know that's beyond the realm of I guess regulatory concern here on the contrary it's if it has the effect if it's seen on the screen by the user then the fact that it's encrypted we're saying look you've got to have regard to the safety of your users and we've got a set of expectations here we've got a set of requirements and you can't just say oh well it's encrypted so forget all that. Yeah so I understand what you're saying particularly with respect to a lot of the popular social media platforms are either already end to end encryption or becoming encryption so I understand the concern I understand young children are using these and there is bullying behaviour but at the same time something is either encrypted or it's not and as a good friend of mine often said it's maths it's either encrypted or it's not and so it does raise particular challenges because if you weaken encryption for something like this you're also potentially weakening in almost likely weakening encryption for things like the banking system and you know that is a difficult balance and I suspect you might, well I'll give you the opportunity to say something more but it is a concern for many people when they're looking at the approach for Australia around these things. Well certainly in terms of the basic online safety expectations the way that we would think about this is these are things that if you're providing a service to millions of Australians and hundreds of millions of people around the world but certainly our interest is in the safety of Australians we certainly hope that our approach will be of interest in other countries and the evidences that it is then again I can't put it any more simply than the fact that it's encrypted is not a get out of jail free card it doesn't allow you to say well we don't have to worry about safety quite the contrary. Okay great so I would like to come back to the point about international exporting of our policy but before we do that given how much work and attention and by yourself by the e-safety commissioner Julia Mangrant who does an excellent job the announcement of the inquiry into big tech comes as a little bit of a surprise in terms of the amount of work that has been done this new legislation will come into play in January why is the inquiry needed now given the changes that are about to come in and why do you really think you can do this issue justice in three months over a Christmas period after the year that everybody has had? I think there's several reasons why firstly the e-safety commissioner is about to have significantly expanded powers there's a number of codes that are being made we're finalizing the basic online safety expectations so it is an opportunity to I guess pressure test with the community what are your present experiences of online services, parents, schools, children and other stakeholders and those findings will undoubtedly inform the way that the e-safety commissioner exercises her powers secondly we've clearly seen in the revelations by the Facebook whistleblower Francis Horgan troubling indications of business practices the way that the algorithms operate and in particular the mental health implications of that so our users encouraged to go more and more down a rabbit hole of a particular subject an anorexic teenage girl seeing more and more content about dieting and body image and so on so those are some very significant issues that we think need to be examined and we also think it's an opportunity for the tech companies to come forward and talk about what their safety practices are and explain to Australians how they're keeping them safe so this is a very important set of issues it's clear to me as a politician and to my colleagues from the number of times this gets raised with us it's of big concern to families and parents and to kids and so I couldn't think of anything that is more appropriate for the parliament to be looking at that an issue like this which so much goes to the safety of Australians so don't disagree with you I think it's just a question of the timing and the length of the time and it seems to me that you're indicating that there might be further action that comes out of this beyond the new e-safety legislation that comes into play in in January sure well I'm saying a couple things firstly that under the powers e-safety commissioner now has she's got quite a degree of discretion quite a number of regulatory tools this inquire will be very useful in informing for her how she might use those tools but yes of course if we identify other areas where we think action is needed we certainly stand ready to do that these social media services are such a prevalent part of the lives of Australians many hours a day many millions of us from quite young ages so these are very important issues and we've certainly over the last few years done a lot of work in putting a regulatory framework around them but we certainly don't think that the job is done let's touch on the media bargaining code because it's something that you talk about in in the book quite extensively and also I think is is one of the capstone pieces of policy everyone will remember it we had the standoff with Google and Facebook government held your ground and we now have a situation where Google and Facebook are paying substantial amounts of money to a small number of media providers in Australia outside of the code though so the code allows for the negotiation staff and outside of the code now on the one hand that's a victory because that money was not being paid to news companies in Australia before the government took this action and I'm focused on the efficacy point and if the obligation or the intent of that legislation was to shore up and ensure that we have good journalism in Australia do we have is there evidence that the money that is being given to media companies is being used to support media and then the subset of that conversation is and is this actually inadvertently entrenching large media companies in Australia because they're the ones that have been and the deals have been done with you know the the large media companies not with the small or startup environment companies so and it it I'm not disputing the money is now being paid and that was the objective but it's more about the objective of improving ensuring up Australian journalism yeah the underlying public policy objective was first of all the competition policy issue that you have news media businesses competing with Google and Facebook for advertising revenue yet Google and Facebook were using content paid for and generated by news media businesses and not acquiring an ordinary commercial terms so first of all there was the competition policy issue but secondly there was the media policy issue in a liberal democracy you want a diverse vigorous media and that was significantly under threat from the dominance of the platforms we've now had I think about around 15 deals that Google has done slightly fewer for Facebook significant dollar amounts a couple of them have been publicly disclosed by listed companies and there is good evidence that they're using the money to hire more journalists news corp has been advertising for journalists and in some cases specifically linking it to news media bargaining code I noticed in the Australian financial review just the other day an ad for for journalists and saying for the first time they were increasing their newsroom for some years so I think there is pretty clear evidence that this money is being used to hire more journalists on the question of the size of companies I guess the way we looked at it was the journalists around Australia what's going to be the most effective way to maintain and increase their number and clearly the most effective way is to go to the biggest employers of journalists that being said there is quite a wide range of businesses that have received funding and the revenue the the minimum amount of annual revenue you need to earn to qualify to seek to negotiate under the code is 150 000 so it can certainly cover quite small businesses I mentioned before our principle was to regulate just enough to get the outcome that we wanted and so we think it is a very positive thing that these outcomes have been done through voluntary commercial negotiation but clearly the reason the platforms have come to the table to negotiate is because they know that if they don't they will find themselves in the compulsory bargaining process I think we'll all be watching closely to see who else has these agreements entered into and final question for you because I'm conscious we're coming up to time one of the most common criticisms of government regulation in this space is that for better or for worse and this is not intended necessarily as a criticism of politicians or of public servants but they often don't understand the technologies that they're regulating or they don't understand them as well as industry does and I think that was evident for example with the media bargaining code where one of the main criticisms of it was that there was a misunderstanding for example of the nature of the internet and links so two part question one would you do it would you craft that legislation differently knowing what you know now you've been in conversations with heads of google and facebook for example around the technical part not the intent but the the technical drafting of it and how do we upskill to address this asymmetry of knowledge where actually there is a real legitimate public purpose for government to be legislating and taking action in this space and I encourage and commend that but how do we make sure that that regulation and and regulatory interventions achieve their purpose with respect to the the actual technical applications when that knowledge is largely held by the the industry partners on the first question of the specific legislation will we do it differently I would say no we did consult pretty extensively we went through I think three successive drafts in which there was consultation and we did that in a very conscious way and bear in mind it started with a process of the a triple c developing the digital platforms inquiry the final report with several hundred pages so that was about an 18 month process within started on some development of the code extensive as I say extensive consultation successive drafts and so on but I'd also make the point that it does suit the tech companies to say oh government you don't understand if you seek to regulate us your country will be a technological backwater and I guess I've heard that most of the time I've been in parliament and it's a convenient thing to say if you want to avoid being regulated but I think there's a little so I agree I think the assessment of technological backwater is a a move that the tech companies often use but my experience and I worked in the public service for the last 10 years on these issues and I think the level of knowledge is very asymmetrical in favour of industry so I do think there is some element of of it is a fair comment in terms of expertise so the the second point I would make is that to some extent the solution to that problem lies in the hands of the tech sector and indeed I welcome the fact that just in the last few months the sector in Australia has come together to establish the tech council which now has a hundred members including some of the biggest Australian tech companies at Lassian Canva amongst others at the very highest levels and indeed they had an event in Canva just a couple of days ago you know Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon Brooks from Atlassian were there Cliff Obrecht from Canva so to have owners of these very large Australian tech businesses in Canberra walking the halls of parliament and engaging at all levels is a very good thing so yes the business that the tech sector is complex the technology is fast-moving and so I think it's a very good thing that that is happening and you know government always seeks to I guess understand the industries that it regulates it's not a it's not a perfect process I readily concede that but I think I think there is improving mutual understanding I would say I think that is very fair and in closing I have I have focused on a lot of the challenging parts of the work of the government in this conversation but I would like to end by acknowledging that one of the the things that is particularly heartening for me in this field is that there are more governments around the world waking up and stepping up to the fact that we can change and shape technology for the public good and that is something that I am particularly passionate about so please accept my critiques of you in the spirit that they're intended in terms of it's a very important point in the book I seek to emphasise my strong belief that the internet is a force for economic cultural social educational good and that the world is a much better place thanks to this marvellous innovation that doesn't mean it should be beyond regulation but we shouldn't regulate it more than we need to and governments should also be very focused on how do we use the internet to deliver better services for citizens where it can deliver huge benefit so the internet absolutely a big positive governments need to engage with it but I'd much rather live in a world where so many of us are online than not absolutely me too and I'd much rather live in a world with regulation that is effective and that's our mission at the tech policy design centre so thank you very much Minister Fletcher for giving us your time. Pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.