SENATOR THE HON TIM AYRES, MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE: Well, it's very clear where One Nation starts, and the Coalition follows, there's only two possible explanations. One is they are the same. A vote for the Liberals is a vote for One Nation is a vote for the National Party, or secondly, that Pauline Hanson has a mole in the Coalition's Shadow Cabinet, because that smoking policy is exactly the same as One Nation, and One Nation led with it. Superannuation policy is fundamentally the same, One Nation led with it. Why has Pauline Hanson always got the jump on Angus Taylor? It's either there's a mole in the shadow cabinet who is giving Angus Taylor away every day of the week, or as Australians have always suspected, that One Nation and the Liberals and the Nationals are just the same. They are fighting amongst themselves rather than focusing on the interests of ordinary Australians. Pauline Hanson's superannuation policy, fundamentally the same as Andrew Bragg and Angus Taylor's superannuation policy, would rob Australians' retirement incomes and create inflationary pressures now. It's really bad policy to wreck the Australian superannuation system which provides a dignified retirement for working Australians.
Last night on the 7:30 Report, Barnaby Joyce couldn't explain it. He became so frustrated that he blasphemed on the 7:30 Report rather than engage seriously with a serious question about the inflationary impact of these policies and the impact that they would have on ordinary Australians’ retirement incomes. Labor's built the superannuation system to give working Australians a decent retirement income. Barnaby Joyce, Pauline Hanson, Angus Taylor, Andrew Bragg are all about wrecking superannuation, and you can't accept anything else. But this is an anti-worker, anti-superannuation policy approach, and at the heart of it is this mutual distrust and mutual loathing between these parties that keep copying each other.
JOURNALIST: Just on the digital duty of care that you're releasing today, the draft. If you had a choice, would you opt out of algorithms?
AYRES: Everybody can see the impact that the algorithms and social media have on kids and our society. The Prime Minister will be making some announcements later on over the course of today. I won't front run what those announcements are. We've seen the impact on our kids. We've seen increasing polarisation and anger in society. We want to make sure that social media is operating in the interests of ordinary Australians, not the other way around.
JOURNALIST: Just on that polarisation, there are some in the Coalition, in One Nation, who are concerned that depending on what tools you announce today, it could amount to censorship, trying to correct this, what do you make of that?
AYRES: Well, the most important thing here is choice for Australians and looking after our kids. That's what Australians expect a national government to do, and that is what the Albanese Government will do, delivering real change here in social media regulation to make sure that ordinary Australians and their kids have got a fair dinkum choice. Okay. Thanks very much.
