From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Peter Dutton is now on TikTok and his first post was about as inspiring as you might imagine.
I know, my first TikTok is supposed to be something fun, and I probably should say something that is or isn't demure. But I really joined TikTok for one reason. It's to tell you that we did not have to live in a country where you spend your whole life renting.
It's easy to see this as a case of Steve's Bashemi with a skateboard trying to appeal to the kids, but it's also a sign of a broader trend among Australian politicians around a third of them more on TikTok, with more likely to join. Peter Dutton's move to TikTok is especially curious beyond his use of the word demure. It signals that he's made a calculation that getting votes is more important than any security concerns about the company.
Today special correspondent for the Saturday Paper, Jason Cottsugus on whether TikTok is actually a threat or just an opportunity for political embarrassment. It's Monday, September twenty three. Hello Jason, how are you today, Rigby?
I am very well.
Nice to have you back on the show. So, Jason, I recently watched Peter Dutton's first attempt at TikTok and I have some questions. The big one is why why does he or I guess his advisors, why do they think that this is a good idea?
Well, I think, firstly, this is a huge audience that are on TikTok. I think it's about ten million Australians, almost thirty seven percent of the whole Australian population. It tends to be Australians who are in that eighteen to thirty six age group, and that's an audience that Peter Dutton can't afford to ignore. In the twenty twenty two election, the Labour Party used TikTok very effectively and the Coalition knows that, and they know that they need to play catch up here.
Okay, but it's still a gamble, I suppose, in the sense that it has to work to be successful. So do you think that it's even possible for someone like Peter Dutton, a politician in his fifties, with this fairly stiff public persona to actually do well on TikTok.
Yeah, this is a really good question because Peter Dutton's got quite a severe look and he's not a natural when it comes to talking on camera. He doesn't convey that warmth and kind of humor that comes so easily to other politicians.
A lot of criticism over my rejection of putting pineapple on pizza, and I'm not backing away from it, not one iota. Pineapple doesn't belong on pieza, but there are three things.
So I think Peter Dutton's team would be looking to David christ of Fully, the leader of the L ANDP in Queensland, who has used social media very effectively in the last few months and he's very likely to win the upcoming state election on October twenty six. Even more relevant is the new Prime Minister of New Zealand, Christopher Luxen. He's a bald conservative, not particularly photogenic politician who also used TikTok very successfully in his campaign last year.
Everyone get ready with me for another day on the campaign trail.
My morning starts first with the shit the choices of White Blue.
I think Christopher luckson, you know, he's got those awkward personality traits perhaps that Peter Dutton has, and he was able to overcome that post videos of himself getting dressed. There was one video where he's talking about, you know, skin care for his bald head.
A lot of you have said to me, lot, Chris, you're a good looking, bold man.
How do you keep your skin in such good condition?
All at these two tricks in my skin key ragime, I have a daily moisturizer.
And you know, he was able to really make fun of himself in a way that endeared him to New Zealand voters. So I think there's form there, and Peter Dutton's team have clearly decided that he can try and do the same thing. He might seem awkward, but I guess he's just trying to be himself and that's probably the best thing that he can do, because if he tried to contrive some other sort of personality, then I think that would be even worse.
Yeah, the kids would be all over that. Okay, So Peter Dutton, he's not trying to be anything that he is, and he's not alone in embracing TikTok. Tell me a bit about what other federal politicians are doing on the platform.
The person with the most followers is Green's housing spokesman, Max Chandler Mayther.
So, if you're like me and you've left making your rental submission to the last minute, I'm going to talk you through how to make one some of my experiences as a renter, and why it's so important that you make a submission so submissions close.
He's got over one hundred and sixty thousand followers. I guess that's perhaps not so surprising. He's in the target sort of TikTok age group, and he's also the housing spokesman. This is probably the hottest issue on TikTok too.
He said that we would have to ask permission to use the yard or hang up our clothes in the yard, and would have to constantly ask his permission to do that. Obviously, we were never going to sign a contract like that.
And then you know Labour's Julian Hill, who's been very outspoken about his embrace of TikTok for quite a long time. He's got the second highest number of followers at over one hundred and forty three thousand. The liberal MP with the highest number of followers is Michael Suoker, he's the coalition's housing spokesman. He's only got six thousand followers. And then you know, by way of comparison, you know some of the independents of managing to sort of build strong
audience as well. Pauline Hanson's got around eighty thousand followers, Jackie Lamby about thirty thousand followers, and Monic Ryan, the TLMP who's the member for Kuyong, she's built an audience of fifty one thousand followers. But there's one federal parliamentarian with by far and away the most momentum on TikTok
right now, and that's Fatima Payment. She is, of course, the West Australian senator who defected from the Labor Party over their stance on Gaza and is now sitting in the Senate as an independent.
To the Sigmas of Australia, I say that this Goofier government have been capping not just now but for a long time a few of you.
Since then, she's built a following of over ninety five thousand people, and that's largely thanks to a video of this very unusual speech she gave in the Senate, which has sort of become known as the Skibberty speech.
If that becomes law, you can forgore skull emoji all about watching Juke Dennis or catching a dub with the bros on fot chat. Is this Prime Minister serious?
It was?
This a two minute speech filled with Internet slang, which she says is used by jen Z. But I wouldn't know that because I didn't understand a single word she was saying. But it's attracted this incredible audience. I think
it's got about forty million views so far. It's notable that the Prime Minister Anthony Albanezi is not on TikTok, and it's going to be really interesting to see if and when he joins the platform, because I think the fact that Peter Dutton has decided to be on there despite the Liberal Party's long running opposition to TikTok, tells us calculation has been made and that no matter what the security concerns are, there's just too many people watching it. You cannot ignore that audience.
Coming up after the break the Coalition's anti TikTok history and the star advisor to Anthony Albernezi who now works for TikTok Jason. There are more than a billion active monthly users on TikTok, and accordingly it's becoming this hugely important campaigning tool, including in Australia. You've been tracking its use by politicians here. But at the same time, there have been these security concerns about TikTok, so can you tell me about that.
That's right. So TikTok is of course owned by a Chinese company called byte Dance, and there has been this concern that the Chinese government can force byte Dance to hand over any of the very valuable data that TikTok collects from its users. So, you know, responding to those concerns, in April last year, the Attorney General Mark Dreyfus announced that there would be an immediate ban on TikTok being
used on any government supplied device. You know, he was acting on advice that he had received from Australian intelligence and security agencies that there's a high chance, in their view, that Biddance is collecting all the data of TikTok users and possibly passing it on to the Chinese government if the Chinese government wants that data, and they're trying to guard against that by saying that anyone who wants to use TikTok has to do so on a separate phone,
essentially a burner phone. And it's worth adding that it's not just the Australian government who are worried about this. India ban TikTok in twenty twenty. The United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand many other countries in Europe also don't allow TikTok on government or politicians' devices. And then, of course, in April this year, US President Joe Biden signed a law that would ban TikTok in the US unless it's diver tested from its parent company, byte Dance within the year.
And I think if we put a time clock on that, it's about within the next four months if this law is not overturned, and byte Dance would have to divest TikTok if it wants to remain active in the United States. TikTok is appealing this law. They're urging a US federal appeals court to overturn it. The irony, of course, is that they're making this argument that Joe Biden's law infringes
TikTok's free speech, and you know it's ironic. Given that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company and there's no freedom of speech in China.
Okay, So banning TikTok on government vhones is one thing, but a total ban, like what might come into play in the US, is a much more drastic step. So is there support for something like that in Australia.
Well, you know, the strongest critics of TikTok have come from within Peter Dutton's own party. Opposition Home Affairs spokesperson James Patterson has been a strident critic of TikTok. He's also been very critical of other ways in which he feels that China is trying to compromise Australian security, and he has said that if the US successfully forces TikTok to be divested from ByteDance, that Australia should seek to do the same. You know, he was most critical of
TikTok back in March this year. That's a good six months before Peter Dunton decided to get on board, and it's perhaps not surprising that we haven't heard him in the last few weeks being as critical of TikTok or
raising any of the concerns that he's raised previously. I think given that both Labor and the Coalition agree that TikTok poses a security risk to Commonwealth agencies and government employees and MPs, it remains to be seen how the US court case will influence the Australian government's decision on whether or not to ban the platform here in Australia.
Okay, So how is TikTok handling this this blowback from various governments and the prospect of bans.
Well in Australia, they are advertising. So if you drive to Cambra Airport, as all politicians do when they're leaving Canberra at the end of a sitting week, there's a huge billboard there which is advertising TikTok and all of the ways in which it helps Australians, particularly small business owners, market their products. They're also doing a lot of lobbying during this year. They hired Sabina Hussick. They added her
to their government relations or lobbying team. Sabina Hussick is of course the sister of Ed Husick, the Federal Minister for Industry, a very senior cabinet minister. Sabina also has her own very strong tires in Canberra to the Labor Party. She's a former deputy chief of staff to Anthony Alberanezi when he was opposition leader. She was also a key operative over many years to the former Victorian Labor Premier
Dan Andrews. She's a very well connected Labor Party operative and she's now also likely to be a very well paid lobbyist working on behalf of TikTok around the country.
Okay, well, it'll be interesting to see what effect that appointment might have. But regardless, Jason, we're in this situation where there are real security concerns around the use of TikTok, raised by both the government and the opposition. In spite of that, we're seeing more and more politicians getting their bonafhones and getting on TikTok anyway, chasing every last vote.
So I suppose the bigger question here is should these politicians be doing this given that this is an app affiliated with a foreign guy in a country where there is no free speech.
So if we put aside TikTok's legal troubles in the United States and whether or not the Chinese government wants to harvest the data that TikTok collects and use it for its own purposes. The US government would say its own nefarious purposes. One security expert that I spoke to said, perhaps the real question here is should we even be on TikTok in the first place? What are the principles involved here? And his argument to me was that at the end of the day, TikTok is a town hall
environment where not everybody is welcome. And he's asking the question of Australian politicians and Australian citizens, are they comfortable getting onto a platform where Hong Kong protesters, Tibetans, Muslims from Western China, or anyone else that's been critical of China and its human rights record is not welcome. And this person put it to me that his simple view was that Australians and Australian politicians just should not be on TikTok on principle.
Jason, thank you so much for your time.
Ruby, as always, it's great to talk. Thanks very much.
Also in the news today, three Aboriginal police officers have lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission alleging racial vilification, derision and unequal pay by the Northern Territory Police over a twenty year period for their work as Aboriginal community
police officers. The Northern Territories Police Commissioner Michael Murphy didn't directly comment on the complaint, but has reiterated his commitment to cultural reform in anti police following his public apology to First Nations Territorians at the Gama Festival earlier this year. And a sixty five year old man has been arrested in Rome over the weekend over the alleged murder of
two women in Collingwood, Melbourne. In nineteen seventy seven, twenty seven year old Suzanne Armstrong and twenty eight year old Susan Bartlett were found stabbed multiple times in a shocking double murder that has come to be known as the Easy Street murders. Homicide detectives have been trying to solve the case for almost fifty years, making it the longest cold case in the state. Victorian Police Commissioner Shane Patten says police intend to charge the man with two counts
of murder and one charge of rape. He says he hopes the arrest brings the women's families closer to the answers they deserve. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am, thanks for listening,