Author: Morgan

Elon Musk’s X has called for a delay in Australia’s under-16s social media ban, arguing it has “serious concerns” about the lawfulness of the “punitive” policy.

X was one of over a dozen companies the eSafety commissioner wrote to earlier this month, asking whether they believed they should be required to ban children under 16 years of age from their platform from 10 December, when the law is due to come into effect.

The company has said in a submission to a Greens-led inquiry on age verification systems that compliance obligations for the ban should commence at least six months after the release of regulatory guidelines – which were issued this month – and there should be a grace period.

The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has said that she does not intend to target companies for enforcement action immediately on 10 December, but will begin looking for “systemic failures” to comply with the regulations after that date. Under the legislation the commissioner can seek fines of up to $50m for non-compliance.

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In its submission, X said less than 1% of the platform’s Australian users were under 16, and while the company agrees strategies for mitigating the risk of harm to children are fundamental, it had concerns about the social media ban.

The company’s submission echoed similar concerns raised when the legislation was before the parliament.

“We have serious concerns as to the lawfulness of the Social Media Minimum Age, including its compatibility with other regulations and laws, including international human rights treaties to which Australia is a signatory,” X said in its submission published on Wednesday.

“We are especially concerned about the potential negative impact that the Social Media Minimum Age will have on the human rights of children and young people, including their rights to freedom of expression and access to information, principles which are enshrined in international treaties including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and which must be protected.”

X pointed to comments from the Australian Human Rights Commission in November expressing significant reservations about the legislation.

X argued age assurance for users was a disproportionate response, and there was no evidence banning young people from social media would work to protect young people online or reduce harms without creating new ones.

“Not least amongst these concerns is the risk that when minors are barred from mainstream, regulated social media services, they will migrate to less moderated or entirely unregulated alternatives, thereby exposing them to greater potential harms including privacy breaches or unmoderated content,” X stated.

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Children could also evade the ban, X said, through the use of virtual private networks, for which X said there was no effective means of preventing, short of a full ban or more invasive measures.

The government failing to define which platforms the ban will apply to in the legislation “brings with it a significant risk of regulatory weaponisation”, X said.

This would set up a “punitive regime” that places the burden on responsibility for online activities of young people entirely on social networks, the company said, and “poses a major threat to freedom of information, speech, and access to the internet.”

X has argued the government should implement age assurance on the smartphone level – something other platforms, including Meta, have argued for.

The submission comes as the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the communications minister, Anika Wells, are at the United Nations in New York to advocate for other countries to follow in Australia’s footsteps.

A spokesperson for Wells declined to comment, but pointed to comments made earlier this month where Wells said platforms “have no excuse not to be ready.”

When Guardian Australia broke the first story which revealed the Coalition’s robodebt scheme was flawed and grossly unfair at the tail end of 2016, the government’s media strategy was to dismiss reporter Christopher Knaus as a left-wing journo.

Almost nine years on, Knaus is one of the key voices in SBS’s three-part documentary, The People vs Robodebt, which tells the story of how a disastrous automated Centrelink debt recovery scheme was exposed by brave whistleblowers, victims, digital activists, lawyers and journalists.

The media strategist who framed Knaus as a left-winger, former Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller, also features in the film.

“We were able to sell a different story to the mainstream media,” Miller says in episode one which airs on SBS on Wednesday.

Miller, who slowly began to realise the scheme was unfair, says friendly media outlets such as the News Corp tabloids and The Australian were fed the narrative that “we were recovering debts because we were trying to protect the integrity of the welfare system”.

The documentary reveals not only the tragic toll the scheme had on victims and their families but how the hard work of everyone involved eventually led to the scheme being declared illegal and the awarding of compensation.

In July 2023 the royal commission’s report labelled the scheme “crude and cruel”, “neither fair nor legal” and a “costly failure of public administration”.

It said that “more friendly media” was used to counter negative reporting on the scheme.

In the weeks after his initial report, Knaus obtained leaked documents and spoke with internal Centrelink whistleblowers to report a string of exclusives about the failures of the robodebt scheme, including revealing its deeply flawed reliance on the unlawful process of income averaging.

In one exclusive, published two days before Christmas, Knaus reported: “A Centrelink compliance officer has broken ranks to describe the government’s crackdown on welfare debts as grossly unfair, saying its new automated compliance system is flawed and overly harsh on those on sickness benefits.”

Tips from victims began to pour in, leading to sustained reporting by Knaus and his former Guardian colleague Luke Henriques-Gomes.

Earlier this month the government agreed to pay $475m in additional compensation to roughly 450,000 victims of the robodebt scandal, in the largest class action settlement in Australian history.

Creator and executive producer of the documentary, Michael Cordell, says he wanted to bring the scandal alive because despite it being a “morally bankrupt scheme” it had not caught the imagination of the wider Australian public and it deserved to.

“The reasons for that are complex,” Cordell says. “Perhaps there’s an empathy deficit for people on welfare.”

The tools Cordell used to tell the story were a hybrid drama/documentary form in which interviews with key individuals is supplemented by a dramatisation of events.

At the heart of the film is Jenny Miller, the mother of Rhys Cauzzo, who was hounded by debt collectors for $17,000 and took his own life aged 28.

In a shocking turn of events after the part-time florist died, the Department of Human Services released personal Centrelink information about Cauzzo to the media in an attempt to create a “counter-narrative” and discredit him.

The royal commission later revealed Cauzzo’s debt had been unlawfully calculated using the “income averaging” method, like the hundreds of thousands of other victims of the scheme.

All episodes of The People vs Robodebt are available to stream on SBS On Demand now, with episodes dropping weekly on SBS at 7.30pm each Wednesday.

Donald Trump appeared to laugh it off Tuesday when an escalator and a teleprompter both malfunctioned during his United Nations visit – but for US officials it was no laughing matter.

The White House said an investigation had been launched into whether the moving stairway was stopped on purpose to humiliate the US president, who later bashed the global body in his speech to the UN general assembly in New York.

“If we find that these were UN and staffers who were purposefully trying to trip up, literally trip up the president and the first lady of the United States, well, there better be accountability for those people. And I will personally see to it,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News on Tuesday evening.

Leavitt also posted to X after the incident: “If someone at the U.N. intentionally stopped the escalator … they need to be fired and investigated immediately.”

A UN spokesman said the mishap happened because someone in front of Trump accidentally set off a safety mechanism on the escalator, causing it to shut down.

In a statement earlier in the day, Leavitt pointed to a report in the Times of London newspaper on Sunday saying that UN staff members had joked that they would turn off the escalators and “tell him they ran out of money” amid sweeping US funding cuts.

Several other White House figures and conservative commentators also speculated about a plot against Trump.

Footage showed the 79-year-old president and First Lady Melania Trump getting on the escalator at UN headquarters, before it stopped with a lurch after a short distance.

‘A bad escalator’

Trump’s bad luck continued when his teleprompter was not working for the start of the speech.

“Whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble,” Trump said.

He then went on to – apparently jokingly – link the two incidents to what he said were the UN’s multiple failings, including a lack of support for his peace efforts in a series of conflicts.

“I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United Nations,” Trump said.

“All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that, on the way up, stopped right in the middle. If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen, but she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape.”

He added: “These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much.”

But the UN insisted there were simple explanations.

“A subsequent investigation, including a readout of the machine’s central processing unit, indicated that the escalator had stopped after a built-in safety mechanism on the comb step was triggered at the top of the escalator,” Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, said in a statement.

A videographer filming the US delegation’s arrival “may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above”, the statement continued.

The escalator was “reset” and was soon back in operation, Dujarric earlier told AFP.

“Regarding the teleprompter, we have no comment since the teleprompter for the US president is operated by the White House,” Dujarric said.

With Agence France-Presse and Reuters

Jimmy Kimmel returned to air on Tuesday saying Donald Trump “tried his best” to cancel him, but instead forced millions of people to watch his show, hitting back against the corporate suspension that ignited a national debate over free speech and outcry over the bullying tactics of the Trump administration.

“It’s been overwhelming” Kimmel said during his first monologue since Disney, which owns ABC, suspended his late-night show from the network last week under pressure from Trump officials over his comments on the shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. “I’ve heard from a lot of people over the last six days, I’ve heard from people all over in the world over the last six days, everyone I have ever met has reached out.”

Kimmel’s comments come one day after Disney, facing backlash from Hollywood stars, unions, media hosts and even Republicans such as Ted Cruz, allowed Jimmy Kimmel Live! to resume production.

The company had indefinitely suspended the show following right-wing outcry over Kimmel’s 15 September monologue, in which he said that “the Maga gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

On Tuesday night, Kimmel thanked his fellow late night hosts for their support and thanked his audience and supporters.

“And most of all I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support my right to share those beliefs anyway” Kimmel added.

“Even though I don’t agree with many of those people on most subjects, some of the things they say even make me want to throw up, it takes courage for them to speak out against this administration, and they did and they deserve credit for it” he said.

“I do want to make something clear, because it’s important to me as a human and that is, you understand that it was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said. “I don’t think there’s anything funny about it.”

“Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what – it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual” he said. “That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make, but I understand that to some that felt either ill-timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way.”

Later in the monologue, Kimmel said that “this show is not important” adding that “what is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”

“The president of the United States made it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs” Kimmel said. “Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”

“A government threat to silence a comedian the President doesn’t like is anti American” he added.

Kimmel’s comments on the shooting of Kirk angered Trump supporters and officials who have vowed to avenge the death of the conservative activist. Last Wednesday, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, threatened ABC’s affiliate licenses if Disney did not “take action” against the host. Two broadcast groups that own hundreds of affiliate stations — Nexstar, which is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2bn merger, and Sinclair — then refused to air the program, leading Disney CEO Bob Iger and Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden to suspend production.

The move drew intense backlash from the Hollywood community and free speech advocates and prompted boycotts and protests against both ABC and Disney.

Around an hour before Kimmel’s return on Tuesday, Trump lashed out at Kimmel and criticized ABC for allowing the comedian’s show back on air.

“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back” Trump wrote on Tuesday night. “The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his ‘talent’ was never there.”

“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” Trump added.

“Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” Trump said, seemingly referring to the settlement he reached with ABC News last year in a defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network.

On Monday, hours before Disney announced Kimmel’s return, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released an open letter signed by over 400 Hollywood stars condemning Disney’s decision as “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation.” Signees included Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Robert De Niro.

In a statement on Monday, the company said the decision to pre-empt Kimmel’s show was made “to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country.”

“It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” the statement continued. “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

Kimmel’s return to air marked the end of, as fellow embattled late-night host Stephen Colbert put it on Monday night, “our long, national, late-nightmare”.

Although Kimmel’s show returned to ABC on Tuesday, it did not return to ABC affiliate networks owned by Sinclair. The company, which is known to promote conservative talking points, said it would not allow the late-night show to air until Kimmel apologized to Kirk’s family and made a donation to his conservative activist group Turning Point USA.

“Beginning Tuesday night, Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming,” the company said, which has the nation’s largest number of ABC affiliate stations.

“Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return,” the group added in a statement late Monday.

Nexstar also confirmed that it will continue to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! on its stations in 22 states. “We made a decision last week to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel Live! following what ABC referred to as Mr Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse,” the company said. “We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve.”

The two companies’ continued pre-emption means that Jimmy Kimmel Live! did not air on almost a quarter of ABC affiliate stations. The show continues to be available online as well as on the streaming services Hulu and Disney+.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has publicly endorsed Andrew Hastie as a future Liberal leader in a fresh threat to Sussan Ley’s attempts to unite the fractured party.

Price has swung in behind the West Australian MP as the former solider’s personal campaigns on net zero and manufacturing policy stoke fresh division inside the party and renew internal speculation about a future leadership challenge.

After last week threatening to quit the shadow frontbench if the party re-committed to net zero by 2050, Hastie this week turned on the “nameless cowards” within the party who provided anonymous quotes to The Australian urging him to tone down his freelancing.

The internal row came after Hastie posted a social media video advocating a revival of domestic manufacturing, in which he blamed both major parties for killing Australia’s car-making industry.

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“We’re a nation of flat-white makers, when we could be making beautiful cars like this again,” Hastie said, standing alongside a 1969 red Ford Falcon.

Hastie’s “Australia-first” pitch was widely viewed internally as an alternative policy vision from an aspiring future leader, particularly given manufacturing falls outside his home affairs portfolio.

The former Special Air Services captain did not contest the Liberal leadership after the May election but has repeatedly spoke of his desire to one day fill the role.

Price leapt to her colleague’s defence on Wednesday, suggesting his internal critics were agitating because they saw him as a threat.

“I think they probably see him as some kind of threat, because he is so good at what he does,” she told 2GB.

Asked if Hastie was capable of leading the Liberal party, Price said: “I think so.”

“The topics that I spoke to at Cpac [conference], which I think we should be focused on our key institutions, which are family, community and our nation – I think are at the core of [what] Andrew Hastie’s leading with,” she said.

“I think he’d make a remarkable leader one day.”

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The Liberal MPs Garth Hamilton and Henry Pike have also publicly endorsed Hastie as a future leader in recent days. Guardian Australia has spoken to two other Liberal MPs who share the same view.

Price was this month dumped from the shadow frontbench after refusing to support Ley’s leadership or apologise for suggesting, without evidence, the federal government was bringing in Indian migrants to win votes.

The Northern Territory senator refused to endorse Ley again on Wednesday.

She vowed to continue to fight alongside Hastie for the Liberal Party to dump net zero.

“We don’t have much in way of policy,” she said the Liberals’ agenda, which put all of its policies – including net zero – up for review after the election defeat.

“We are supposed to be an effective opposition. We do want to be able to do our job, so we’re not going to sit back and be silent until such time as we have policy positions on a number of issues.”

There’s a new statue on the east end of the National Mall for Washington DC residents and tourists to enjoy. The bronze statue shows two men frolicking, grinning wide and holding hands, each with a foot joyously kicked back.

“We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein,” a plaque at the bottom of the spray-painted bronze installation reads. A permit from the National Park Service will allow the statue to stay on the National Mall grounds through 8pm on Sunday.

The fabricator of the statue remains unknown, but it has artistic and thematic similarities to recent art pieces critical of the president.

Past sculptures on the National Mall that paid side-eyed tribute to Trump include a bronze pile of poop perched on a congressional desk to “honor” January 6th protestors, and a statue titled “Dictator Approved,” featuring a golden thumbs up crushing the Statue of Liberty’s crown and the base featuring approving quotes of Trump from Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Kim Jong-un and Viktor Orbán.

The sculpture’s spotlight on Trump’s past relationship with the convicted sex trafficker underscores what has been a particularly persistent thorn in the president’s side, and has caused fissures in the Trump’s typically united Maga base.

While the president has worked to quash interest into the two’s former friendship, the issue continues to surface again and again.

An alleged letter from Trump to Epstein in the latter’s 50th birthday book included a drawing of a nude woman’s torso asserting that the two had “certain things in common” and that “enigmas never age”. Trump is far from the only notable presence in Epstein’s birthday book and flight logs, with other big names including the former president Bill Clinton and attorney Alan Dershowitz.

Lines from the alleged birthday letter are printed verbatim on the statue’s plaques – one beneath Trump’s feet, one beneath Epstein’s and another on the third honoring “Friendship Month,” that features two outstretched hands forming a heart

The president offered the press a scathing response to the statue.

“Liberals are free to waste their money however they see fit – but it’s not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep,” a statement from the White House read.