Greens senator warns against tech barons influencing Australian politics
Australia has been warned about tech barons growing their influence in our politics after Donald Trump let Elon Musk into the White House.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young is calling for safeguards to stop tech billionaires gaining greater influence in Australian politics, calling the “control” the likes of Elon Musk wield over the Trump administration “scary”.
Donald Trump tasked Mr Musk, the world’s richest person, with cutting back on government spending after the tech baron carried out a charm offensive on the US President in the lead-up to last year’s election.
Since Mr Trump entered the White House for a second time last month, several of Mr Musk’s ideas have been given legs.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has scrapped fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram in the wake of Mr Trump’s election in a move also broadly seen as favouring the new administration.
Senator Hanson-Young, who is also her party’s communications spokeswoman, has long called for greater regulation of big tech.
She has backed Labor’s proposals for a digital duty of care and a levy on social media companies to pay for news consumed on their platforms.
But she warned on Wednesday that Labor and the opposition were “starting to crab-walk away from stronger regulations”.
She also said the Albanese government appeared to be “following tune with the billionaires of just wanting to suck up to Donald Trump rather than taking on the agenda”.
“I am concerned that Australia is trying to hide behind the couch and hope that Donald Trump and Musk and Zuckerberg and all of Donald Trump’s billionaire bros don’t notice us,” she told the ABC.
“It’s not the type of politics we need here in Australia.
“This creeping in of Trumpian policies into Australia and the type of the control that billionaires have over politics in the US right now is scary and it can’t be allowed to happen here.”
One of Mr Musk’s first moves has been to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), throwing global aid efforts into turmoil and relinquishing Washington of a key soft power tool.
The Trump administration has also taken aim at property ownership laws in Mr Musk’s native South Africa.
Mr Musk has been critical of the laws, which allow the South African government to seize land without compensation in certain cases.
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