Making Sausages with Kate Chaney

Look, before we get stuck into the process of making sausages this week, and just to be clear, I love sausages.

Let's celebrate a win.

Coles has bowed to pressure over its contract with Palantir, the global data company run by a techno-fascist after a consumer campaign spearheaded by GetUp.

Lizzie, what's happened and why should we be celebrating?

Really exciting news, I think.

So GetUp's had a big win.

Over a year ago, people I don't think realized that Coles had a contract with Palantir.

Palantir is the company that was founded by Peter Thiel.

It's notorious in the United States for cooperating with with agencies like ICE for identifying people for deportation, and also name-checked by Donald Trump for the assistance they provided in the Iranian war, at least, so right after the US military bombed a girls' school.

So associated with a lot of human rights abuses, but essentially is a data analytics company run by Peter Scheel and Alex Karp, who are pretty famous for putting their views out there about the primacy and importance of Western values and how technology can contribute to that.

So a pretty awful company in a bunch of different ways, had a contract with Coles.

They were then subject to a lot of campaigning by GetUp, including 85,000 of their members signing petitions, taking action and the like.

And Coles then agreed that it was going to end its partnership with Palantir, or at least announced that, and not extend it beyond next year, which I think is a really interesting trajectory.

It comes off the back of a few different things.

So Palantir has a few different contracts with the Australian government, including the Signals Directorate, Defence Partnerships and some other contracts.

It's also making inroads into other corporates like Coles, but also Rio Tinto, interestingly in the UK as They have a pretty notorious contract with the NHS and some of our civil society advocates, friends over there, have been pointing out that some of the claims Palantir's been making about the efficiencies they've introduced into that system didn't have any evidence to support them and have been removed.

So the company is starting to feel the consequences of its reputation, but also testing some of the claims they make about what they offer is

So Lizzie, we often talk about regulation as being the path to rights, but often it's also about people standing up.

This consumer action, which involved actions in store at the AGM, which was actually where they headed off the actual settlement of the dispute.

It just shows there's other ways in, doesn't there?

Yeah, completely.

And I think this is something that they could reproduce in other contexts as well.

And I think, to be honest, even if we want regulatory reform that enshrines rights, we're going to have to kind of take action for it, right? So it's a good sign that taking action can make a difference.

This is how we can do this work and that that should also be applied to other legislative reforms on the table, which I think since last week have trebled in number.

We can repurpose some of the energy and activity that was directed there to looking at how we can turn this into legislative action as well.

Look, before we get stuck into the process of making sausages this week, and just to be clear, I love sausages.

Let's celebrate a win.

Coles has bowed to pressure over its contract with Palantir, the global data company run by a techno-fascist after a consumer campaign spearheaded by GetUp.

Lizzie, what's happened and why should we be celebrating?

Really exciting news, I think.

So GetUp's had a big win.

Over a year ago, people I don't think realized that Coles had a contract with Palantir.

Palantir is the company that was founded by Peter Thiel.

It's notorious in the United States for cooperating with with agencies like ICE for identifying people for deportation, and also name-checked by Donald Trump for the assistance they provided in the Iranian war, at least, so right after the US military bombed a girls' school.

So associated with a lot of human rights abuses, but essentially is a data analytics company run by Peter Scheel and Alex Karp, who are pretty famous for putting their views out there about the primacy and importance of Western values and how technology can contribute to that.

So a pretty awful company in a bunch of different ways, had a contract with Coles.

They were then subject to a lot of campaigning by GetUp, including 85,000 of their members signing petitions, taking action and the like.

And Coles then agreed that it was going to end its partnership with Palantir, or at least announced that, and not extend it beyond next year, which I think is a really interesting trajectory.

It comes off the back of a few different things.

So Palantir has a few different contracts with the Australian government, including the Signals Directorate, Defence Partnerships and some other contracts.

It's also making inroads into other corporates like Coles, but also Rio Tinto, interestingly in the UK as They have a pretty notorious contract with the NHS and some of our civil society advocates, friends over there, have been pointing out that some of the claims Palantir's been making about the efficiencies they've introduced into that system didn't have any evidence to support them and have been removed.

So the company is starting to feel the consequences of its reputation, but also testing some of the claims they make about what they offer is

So Lizzie, we often talk about regulation as being the path to rights, but often it's also about people standing up.

This consumer action, which involved actions in store at the AGM, which was actually where they headed off the actual settlement of the dispute.

It just shows there's other ways in, doesn't there?

Yeah, completely.

And I think this is something that they could reproduce in other contexts as well.

And I think, to be honest, even if we want regulatory reform that enshrines rights, we're going to have to kind of take action for it, right? So it's a good sign that taking action can make a difference.

This is how we can do this work and that that should also be applied to other legislative reforms on the table, which I think since last week have trebled in number.

We can repurpose some of the energy and activity that was directed there to looking at how we can turn this into legislative action as well.