Australia news live: Peter Dutton says social media companies see themselves as ‘above the law’ after Elon Musk’s censorship claims | Bondi Junction stabbings

Dutton is asked about the failed defamation case brought by Bruce Lehrmann and the ruling of Justice Lee that, on balance, Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins. Specifically, the opposition leader is asked whether Higgins should be allowed keep the money she was paid in damages.

A couple of points. Firstly, I thought Brittany put out a gracious statement last night. Secondly, I don’t believe that’s workplace should be for women, or for men, for that matter, and there are a lot of changes that have taken place at Parliament House which is a good thing. In relation to the payout, I don’t think the issues are on Brittany’s side here. I think Katy Gallagher and others within the Parliament, won the ministry who very quickly settled this matter.

When pressed, Dutton adds:

If there are matters of concern, then they should be looked at. I don’t think the problem in relation to the payout is on Brittany’s side, I think it’s on the Government as side and others have pointed that out. If there is inappropriate that Katy Gallagher and others tried to eke out of an alleged sexual assault, firstly that reflects poorly on Katy Gallagher, but others as well.

Which sounds an awful lot like the Coalition leader is working very hard to avoid making direct comment about Higgins but is instead still attempting to draw political advantage out of the scandal.

The Opposition leader claims his party is the only party with a “credible pathway to Net Zero by 2050” because Labor’s policy relies on the construction of 28km of poles and wires to shift energy around the country. Dutton has attacked this as a $1.2tn spend.

Asked about whether a re-elected Coalition government would allow renewable energy companies to keep investing or put a stop to growth in the industry, Dutton says he is “more than happy to have renewable investment” but adds “there needs to be social licence with communities.”

There is a moral argument to part of this as well. In the end, as I say, we need to be mindful of our environmental impact that wind turbines don’t have any social licence off the Hunter Coast where they are 260 metres out of the water.

This is also a good point to note that many of the claims made against wind turbines have been misinformation and there has been a very real campaign to exaggerate or spread disinformation about the alleged environmental impact of these structures.

Dutton sums up the Coalition energy policy very simply: “we can’t turn off the old until the new is ready”.

Dutton also makes the claim that Australia is the only country in the G20 that doesn’t have a nuclear industry, and is pulled up by David Speers who points out that Indonesia does not have a nuclear industry, and both Italy and Germany has phased out nuclear power.

Developed economies are only operating because of a firming up power. I know that people want to pretend that wind and solar can go around the clock. It can’t. You need a base load power and maybe hydrogen is the solution, but it’s not prospective and not going to be scalable by the account of many. Let’s hope it is. Let’s hope the batteries work out, let’s hope there is more hydro into the system, but we need to deal with the realities and if we don’t, we will see a significant collapse within our economy. That’s why you need to have 24/7 base load power in there which nuclear can do. The other point in relation to the environmental impact, which is Bill Gates’ point, a 470mW small modular reactor takes two hectares of land. The equivalent out of solar takes 10,000 hectares.

Dutton pushing ahead with nuclear plans to ‘see manufacturing grow’

On nuclear power, Dutton says his party is not yet ready to outline its plan to establish a nuclear power in Australia saying “there is policy work being done at the moment”.

Obviously the events of last week, for example, meant that parts of our program couldn’t be rolled out and that’s not unreasonable, as you would expect. News events overtake all sorts of issues, that the government has a defence policy that they want to spend time on during the week.

Dutton reiterates that he is forging ahead on nuclear power because he wants to “see manufacturing grow” and “power bills for families reduced”.

I want to see businesses prosper so they can employ more staff and pay more taxes. 90% of base load power comes out of the system over the next decade.

This is probably worth a timely reminder that a Coalition government, led by Tony Abbott, oversaw the closure and dismantling of Australian car manufacturing.

The opposition leader says he is “happy” for the Coalition’s proposal for a royal commission into the abuse of Indigenous children to “extend” to include women.

I would be happy to support anything at all that sees the incidence reduced, that sees women and children growing up in a safer environment and also, frankly, to point out where programs are working and the vast majority of good that happens in our society, that we need to talk about, but where we get it wrong, we should be addressing it and this is the number one priority.

Dutton says video games and social media a factor in violence towards women

Asked about the Bondi Junction attack and the decision not to label the attack a terrorist attack despite the attackers targeting of women, Dutton says he agrees that the number of women being killed is a “crisis”.

I’ve been to many scenes of domestic violence and those images stay with you forever – the blood, the violence, the screaming children. The options available are probably greater today than they were a long time ago when I was a police officer in terms of shelter and in terms of financial support, etc, but it is getting worse.

Dutton says he is particularly concerned about violent games and online videos.

I remember advice from the Asio director general a number of years ago that really stuck with me, that a young person sitting behind a computer screen could be convinced to strap a bomb onto them without any religious belief whatsoever.

If they were listening to the right videos and the right indoctrination just over a couple of weeks, and if that’s possible, then the treatment of women, what they are seeing in some of the computer games, what they are seeing on social media, normalisation of all of that, the lack of manners in society more generally because I think social media has dumbed that down – all of that is a key element to it as well.

Duttons says he would support cancelling Australian visas for people who are violent towards police

Dutton says he would support the revoking of a person’s visa where they are are a citizen and respond violently to police, as occurred where a riot erupted following the attack on a Assyrian priest.

If a decision-maker at the Department of Home Affairs had looked at the application for that person to come to our country and been made aware of video of that nature in another part of the country where that person was born, they wouldn’t issue the visa in the first place. So if you come here, you sign up to the conditions of the visa. That means that you conduct yourself according to Australian law and if you don’t, you can reasonably expect to have your visa cancelled.

Dutton is asked about the Coalition’s initial opposition to disinformation laws proposed last year, described as “a debacle, Orwellian and so on”, has changed in the wake of the Bondi Junction attack.

The opposition leader says “we need to get the balance right”.

That is, we don’t want to impinge on your ability to express a view, but we need to do it respectfully. As I say, the same laws need to apply in the real world as they do online. It is a matter of enforcing the laws and taking action, giving the eSafety commissioner further powers if that’s required. Here we are talking about images in particular which are offensive and which can trigger violent reactions as we saw earlier this week.

Dutton is asked whether he is “willing to boycott social media”. He says that many parents are confronting that decision now and that he has sought to prevent his children from using social media as long as possible.

But as a leader of the opposition, who is a regular Twitter user?

Dutton: Well, to be fair, I’m not. I can’t stand it.

David Speers: But you post every day.

Dutton: Well, certainly my staff do and I do send stuff through if I’m being honest. In terms of our own experience, we didn’t allow our kids to have access to that and we resisted for as long as we possibly could, and I think that’s the most appropriate action here.

Speers: You will keep posting under your name and face?

Dutton: We will keep posting, but we won’t post misinformation or disinformation or violent images. Again, as Phil pointed out before, used in a responsible, sensible way, it’s fine, but people – again, the actions that we saw at the church the other night, the violent response there, I suspect those individuals would have responded that way regardless of what Meta or other companies did because that reflects their values and their approach, and violent reaction is how they thought they should respond to that situation.

Social media platforms ‘impeding police investigations’ into child exploitation material, Dutton says

Peter Dutton says the Coalition is willing to back laws to address misinformation and disinformation in the wake of the Bondi Junction attack.

The opposition leader, in particular, singles out the use of social media platforms for spreading or sharing child sexual abuse material.

As home affairs minister, we tried to get all of the Five Eyes partners together – the home affairs ministers – to exert pressure, particularly in relation to the child protection space. These companies have snubbed their noses at governments in the United States, Canada, Britain, New Zealand, Australia for many, many years. The European Union, I think, has had a gutful as well. And they’re allowing paedophiles to distribute, through their networks, images and videos of children being sexually abused. They are impeding the investigations of the police. So there are many aspects here that we need to deal with.

Social media companies see themselves as ‘above the law’, Peter Dutton says

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, will be speaking to ABC Insiders’ host, David Speers, this morning.

We will bring you all the latest as it happens.

Victims of mass killing at Bondi Junction to be honoured

Good morning