Key events
Josh Taylor
Meta backs age verification by app store or operating system
Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, has said it supports age verification for users at the app store or operating system level, rather than requiring social media companies to verify ages.
Meta’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis, before a parliamentary committee today, echoed the comments made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg before US Congress earlier this year that age verification is best done at operating system or app store level. She said:
That level within the ecosystem is sort of the gatekeeping level for the entire ecosystem, and it provides a way to ensure the least privacy intrusive approach to collecting that information and then utilising that across the ecosystem.
The challenges with doing age verification at an individual app level, for example, is it creates additional privacy intrusions. It will move people from one place that asks for age to other apps that won’t, that don’t ask for age.
And so if you’re trying to really solve that problem and ensure that people can deliver age appropriate experiences and that they have accurate, or more accurate, age information. That seems to be the best approach. We think that’s the best approach.
While the government and opposition have indicated support for age verification on social media – with the Coalition proposing to ban teens under 16 from social media – there is no detail yet on how either party would achieve this.
Josh Taylor
More from the parliamentary committee on social media
Meta has confirmed its algorithm change in 2018 to deprioritise news is why the company now says just 3% of content consumed on its service is news.
The Facebook parent company’s director of public policy in Australia, Mia Garlick, told the parliamentary committee today that the 2018 change “reduced the amount of public content on our services, which included news content, and then it dropped down to 3%”.
She indicated that the experience on Facebook for people who work in a media space compared to everyone else, and people in media would likely see more news on Facebook than others:
If you live and work in a space that’s highly dominated by media, and you might be engaged by a lot of journalists and might be liking a lot of media pages, and therefore feel like your experience is very media driven, and so therefore [think] everyone else’s was.
So it’s trying to provide an insight into the average experience for the majority of people.
Josh Taylor
‘All options on the table’ about pulling news from Meta in Australia, public policy director says
Meta’s director of public policy in Australia, Mia Garlick, said “all options are on the table” when asked whether the company will pull news from its platforms in Australia, should it be designated under the news media bargaining code to pay for news.
Speaking at a parliamentary committee on social media this morning, Garlick said it was still a largely hypothetical proposition given the government has not announced its plans, but said “compliance would look somewhat different” if the law was applied to Meta.
Garlick said what people do on Instagram and Facebook had changed in the past few years, with 50% of the time spent on Instagram now spent on the company’s short video product, Reels. She said there was a hope in the Facebook news product that people would be interested in seeing news on there but “this represents a minority of people who use our services”.
For the vast majority of people using Facebook, less than 3% of their feed is news links. So while there were some promising early signs about Facebook News when it was first rolled out in the US and Europe in 2019 over time, there’s been a massive shift that’s occurred with consumer preferences.
People are now primarily engaged in short-form video and primarily with the non-news content. So overall, we’ve seen an 80% drop in the use of Facebook news, and the poor performance of this product led to our announcement that we would deprecate it here in Australia in February of this year.
The news product was a dedicated – and often hard to find – tab on the app, rather than the news users see in their feed along with updates from friends and family.
Man jailed for tricking wife into leaving Australia under false pretences
A Western Sydney man who deceptively convinced his wife to leave Australia, also taking steps to prevent her return, has been jailed for up to two years and one month.
This is the third conviction for exit trafficking in Australia, the Australian federal police said in a statement.
An Afghani woman living in Australia on a partner visa, now aged 35, had claimed in 2018 she had been deceived by her husband into travelling into Afghanistan.
The court heard the man, an Australian citizen, asked his wife to accompany him on the false premise that he would be undertaking charity work in Afghanistan.
The man, now 44, booked return flight tickets for himself from Australia to Afghanistan, however booked a one-way ticket for the woman. He returned to Australia alone on 1 February 2018 before writing to the department of home affairs to withdraw sponsorship of the woman’s visa.
The woman eventually returned to Australia on 5 February the same year, with the assistance of her relatives.
AFP officers executed a search warrant at the man’s Merrylands home and he was arrested and charged at a later date, pleading guilty last October to one count of facilitating the exit of a person from Australia by using deception.
He was sentenced last Friday to two years and one month, with a non-parole period of 12 months’ imprisonment.
Man charged for allegedly running ‘evil twin’ fake wifi networks to obtain personal data
A West Australian man has been charged after allegedly established fake free wifi access points to capture unsuspecting people’s personal data.
The 42-year-old man is expected to appear before Perth magistrates court today to face nine charges for alleged cybercrime offences, a statement from the Australian federal police says.
AFP analysis allegedly identified dozens of personal credentials belonging to other people on devices seized from the man, as well as fraudulent wifi pages.
Police charged the man last month after launching an investigation in April, when an airline reported concerns about a suspicious wifi network identified by its employees during a domestic flight.
The man’s baggage was searched when he returned to Perth airport from an interstate flight on 19 April. After an initial examination of devices, a search warrant was executed on his Palmyra home on 8 May, which resulted in his arrest and charges.
Police will allege the man used a portable wireless access device to create “evil twin” free wifi networks, which he used at multiple locations to lure unsuspecting users into believing they were legitimate services.
The AFP alleges when people tried to connect to the free wifi networks, they were prompted to sign in with their email and social media logins, which were then allegedly saved to the man’s devices.
The analysis is ongoing to determine the extent of the alleged offending, the AFP said.
Queensland’s new victims’ commissioner feels ‘profound responsibility’
Rebecca O’Connor has been appointed as Queensland’s first victims’ commissioner, AAP reports, in a role designed to advocate for the rights of vulnerable people and provide a platform for their voices to be heard in the justice system.
Its creation was a recommendation from the women’s safety and justice taskforce’s Hear Her Voice report after the stark rise in violence against women and girls in Queensland.
O’Connor is the chief executive of domestic violence support organisation DVConnect and sits on multiple councils and foundations for victims of crime. She said:
Being appointed as the first victims’ commissioner is both a privilege and a profound responsibility.
I am deeply committed to elevating the voices and concerns of those with lived experiences, ensuring our systems prioritise the rights and recovery of victim-survivors.
Statistics reveal there have been nearly 4,600 sexual offences reported to police so far in 2024. There were 8,442 victims of sexual assault in 2023 – a 14% rise from 2022. The majority of victims were women and two-thirds knew their offender.
O’Connor will have the power to undertake systematic reviews and investigate whether additional rights should be added to the charter of victims’ rights. Almost $20m has been provided to the commissioner’s office.
Union welcomes measure to protect regional bank branches
The president of the Financial Sector Union, Wendy Streets, said the conditions imposed as part of the ANZ-Suncorp merger would ensure regional banks and finance jobs were protected:
This gives our finance workers greater job security during what is a challenging process. Importantly, vital banking services will be protected in regional communities, something that is desperately needed amid the slew of regional bank closures we’ve seen take place.
According to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority there was a 23% decline in the number of regional bank branches, from 2,500 to 1,900, between June 2017 and June 2021.
The ANZ-Suncorp merger conditions
Lending commitments
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$15bn of lending and other commitments for Queensland renewable energy projects and to support infrastructure development in preparation for the 2032 Olympic Games.
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$10bn of new lending to support energy projects in Queensland, including bioenergy and hydrogen projects over the next decade.
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$10bn of lending to support Queensland businesses over the next three years.
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Substantial home lending commitments in Queensland, including house lending targets of 3,000 homes and $350m in housing-related lending.
Presence commitments
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No changes to the total number of Suncorp Bank branches in Queensland for at least three years.
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No regional ANZ branches closed Australia wide for three years.
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No regional Suncorp Bank branches closed Australia wide for three years.
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Arrangements with Australia Post: Suncorp Bank to renew its current agreement with Australia Post for the provision of Bank@Post services for a minimum of three years; and ANZ to make best endeavours to join Bank@Post on commercial terms for a minimum of three years.
Employment commitments
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No net job losses across Australia in Suncorp Bank and ANZ, as a result of the transaction, for three years.
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Provide employees affected by the acquisition with specialist support and maximise opportunities for redeployment and external placement.
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Work with consumer advocates, community stakeholders, and the Finance Sector Union to minimise community concerns about the acquisition.
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Physical office for an ANZ Queensland managing director.
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Create a tech hub in Brisbane to employee at least 700 individuals for five years and at least 450 after five years.
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Enter into an agreement with Google for ANZ and Google to: work with Queensland universities on curriculum initiatives; strengthening the focus on women in technology; create a cloud digital leader program for ANZ Queensland employees; and partner on reskilling initiatives.
Treasurer says ANZ-Suncorp merger can proceed, subject to strict conditions
Jim Chalmers has announced that ANZ bank’s proposed takeover of Suncorp, worth more than $4bn, can proceed “subject to enforceable conditions”.
The treasurer said the decision came after “careful consideration [and] much deliberation” and follows nearly two years of scrutiny from stakeholders:
Following this lengthy and robust process, I received clear advice from Treasury, incorporating views from APRA, ASIC, the ACCC and Department of Home Affairs, that it would not be in the national interest to prohibit this transaction.
Chalmers said he “took seriously the competition concerns” from the ACCC but the tribunal “ultimately concluded it would not be likely to have the effect of substantially lessening competition”.
The treasurer said he was approving the proposal “subject to strict conditions”, and said:
The conditions I have imposed are legally-binding and ensure Australians continue to have access to vital banking services, employees aren’t left behind, and Queensland and Australia benefit from the transaction.
The conditions prohibit regional bank closures for three years, require ANZ to make every effort to join Bank@Post, ensure no net employment losses across Australia for three years due to the transaction, and insist on proper engagement with employees and the Finance Sector Union.
‘How do we get more homes on the ground?’
Housing minister Julie Collins was asked about David Pocock’s view that housing should be a human right – and what obligation that puts on the government to escalate measures?
Collins said the states have primary responsibility for housing under the constitution:
That’s one of the difficulties … in the framework in which we’re working, which is why we need to work with states and territories.
They are also all lifting, they’re also all investing, and what we’ve been doing with our housing ministers meetings is making sure that our effort is coordinated. That’s what the prime minister has got through national cabinet, agreement about how do we lift housing in this country, how do we get more homes on the ground? And all of the states and territories are lifting and the commonwealth is lifting, and as I said [there has been] $32bn in new investments since we’ve come to office.
