A Liberal rising star on quitting politics

Now, Paul, the conversation in Canberra, I would say, is blocked.

The government has introduced a whole lot of legislation this week.

We're talking digital duty of care, private health insurance fees for over 65s, and trust taxes, but they're not really getting anywhere with them.

[gentle music]

Yeah, so private healthcare, uh, changes, the coalition and the Greens teamed up to take the bill out of Parliament, which just prompted Labor to reintroduce it.

Um, trust taxes is going to an inquiry, and the Greens are trying to, um, you know, tough- toughen that up in a few respects.

Digital duty of care, there's a pathway there for Labor to pass that with the Greens, but that might also face a snap inquiry.

They've got a whole lot of work ahead of them.

Now, coming up on the show, it's outgoing Liberal Senator Jonno Duniam who we've got coming up for you.

He's the Coalition's Shadow Immigration Minister, and given their recent announcement of that policy, it is a big loss for the party to lose him.

He speaks about his time here in Parliament, what he's most looking forward to post-politics, and who his favorite person is from the other side.

[gentle music] But Paul, let's get into one big policy debate that's been going on this week, the government's digital duty of care laws.

It's a big reform, but it isn't really going anywhere fast.

Yeah.

So Communications Minister Anika Wells, uh, introduced this bill on Thursday, uh, with only minor changes from the, uh, exposure draft.

And for, for listeners of the pod, they would've heard your interview with Anika and known that taking the, uh, ministerial discretion, uh, on defining, you know, serious harms out of the bill, um, they would've known that was in the works.

So not too much of a surprise, uh, there.

In terms of where to from, from here for the bill, I mean, there are Greens demands to toughen it by giving individuals a right to sue social media companies, uh, not just the regulator to do that.

Um, but the coalition are, are quite dead set against it, so it's pretty clear if Labor's gonna pass it, which way they're gonna need to go.

Yeah, I heard Jane Hume in a press conference yesterday when asked if they were gonna negotiate at all.

She basically said, "There's not really much in this bill that we can support," so pretty much n- it's all out the window.

Paul, you spoke to the woman who is eyeball deep in these discussions about online safety more broadly, the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant.

Here she was in that chat explaining what this bill actually aims to do.

This is really about ensuring that the services and the platforms are safer by design, that the companies have proactive obligations to assess the risks and potential harms up front and embed and engineer in the safety, uh, processes rather than, um, waiting till after the damage has been done.

So it's certainly a bold idea, but the government at this stage, they wanna pass it before the end of the year.