Wells wanted to be a diplomat but she’ll be content saving Generation Alpha

Anika Wells is the minister for communications and minister for sport. She has been the driving force behind the legislation that in little more than a fortnight will ban those younger than 16 engaging in social media.

Fitz: Minister, what were your political touchstones growing up?

AW: My first political memories are of my dad regularly laughing and delighting in Paul Keating skewering the opposition in question time. And I remember also doing a school assignment in primary school about traffic signs around our school. And the local state MP called me up about it, which really impressed me.

Communications Minister Anika Wells.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Fitz: And yet politics was not your initial ambition?

AW: No, I always thought I wanted to be a judge or, more probably, a diplomat. That’s why I studied French at school and went on a year-long exchange to a fishing village an hour south of Nantes. I thought it would put me on the pathway to diplomacy.

Fitz: Hence why, when I met you in Paris two years ago, I noted your French was word-perfect and near accent-less. What took you away from that?

AW: Well, the lightning bolt moment on that journey was joining Young Labor and meeting Bill Shorten. He was going around the group, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” And I said, “I want to be a diplomat.” He said, “No, you don’t. You want to be a politician.” And I was really taken aback, and said, “No, that’s not what I want. I want to be a diplomat.” And he said, “Well, let’s see about that ...”

Wells says she and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are on the same page on delaying social media access for children.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Fitz: And we did. When you finally did move into standing for preselection, who was your own political hero?

AW: Well, I had to go the post office to rescind my New Zealand citizenship in order to run in Australia. As I stood in the queue with my newborn baby, Jacinda Ardern was on TV, announcing that she was pregnant as the 38-year-old prime minister of NZ. That was a really formative moment for me. It was possible to do all these things, for New Zealand was already doing it.

Fitz: And before long – after being elected in 2019, and leaving your job as a lawyer – your baby girl would be joined by your twin sons in 2020. Would I be right in saying that if I ask how you cope as a senior cabinet minister with three young children, you’d bite my bloody head off for my outrageous presumption because no male cabinet minister, bloody well gets asked that question, and I should naff off until further notice?

Labor MPs Anika Wells with her twins, Kate Thwaites and Alicia Payne with their babies return to parliament from maternity leave in 2021.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

AW: [Laughing lightly, I think.] No, I don’t mind at all. When Ros Kelly had her baby back in the 1990s – the first federal MP to have one while in office – her boss, [then prime minister] Paul Keating, was very supportive. But essentially, she had to keep it a secret, and act like she hadn’t had a baby. And my contribution to the feminism road is that having had the twins in office I have tried to do that visibly. Because seeing twins and a twin pram on the floor of the House, seeing me holding the twins at a press conference – with the then opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, who held one for me – helps other women have discussions in their workplaces about juggling their responsibilities.

Fitz: [Emboldened.] All right then, how DID you cope?

AW: It’s been hard, but when you know you can cope with breastfeeding twins – on no sleep, whilst defending a 0.65 per cent [electoral] margin in your first term – whilst waiting to run to a division in the House of Representatives, you know it’s all possible. But it was the Labor women who were so essential to making my way through. Some people say to you, “Oh, let us know if you need anything.” And some people actually turn up with a lasagne, and they just walk into your kitchen and they put it in the fridge, and then they make themselves a cup of tea, and they make you a cup of tea as well.

Fitz: Name them and fame them.

AW: Katy Gallagher, Penny Wong and Tanya Plibersek were particularly wonderful.

Fitz: What about Liberal women?

AW: What Liberal and National Party women? In the House we have more ALP women whose first name starts with “A” than there are Liberal and National Party women in total.

Fitz: OK, moving onto the social media ban for the under-16-year-olds that comes in on December 10. Can you sum up the plan in a pithy paragraph?

An example message from Meta when the ban comes into force on December 10.

AW: Firstly, it’s a social media “delay”. We’re giving kids 36 more months to build resilience, digital literacy and real-world connections before they log online. And I think we’re trying to give back to kids their childhoods, and give parents back some peace of mind. This is a delay to the harmful and predatory design features of social media. We’re all very clever, but we can’t out-parent an algorithm, and kids can’t outwit an algorithm. So we’re giving parents another weapon in their arsenal, in what is a daily fight in many households across Australia.

Fitz: OK, did you inherit the plan when you took over as minister for communications, or was it your own fourth baby?

AW: I would categorise it as, “I inherited it from the prime minister.” When he offered me the role of minister for communications, he said: “I’ve chosen you to do this because I believe that you’re a good communicator and you can get this done for the government. This will be such a big legacy piece for us.”

Fitz: Yes, but – dyb, dyb, dyb, dob, dob, dob, hand on your heart and hope to die – do you honestly, believe in it?

AW: I genuinely, honestly, think that we are saving a generation. I think that this will look really untidy for the next couple of months because all big reforms do, and this is a really big reform, but we are saving Generation Alpha [those born between 2010 and 2024], who will grow up in Australia before ever going online or ever going onto social media logins. We are giving them three years [of childhood] back.

Fitz: So what happens to the 350,000 Australians now on Facebook, who are younger than 16? Will they wake up on the morning of December 10 to find their accounts are closed? How will it work?

AW: In the regulatory guidance that we’ve given to the nine platforms affected – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc – they have to tell their users ahead of December 10 that this is coming, and that theirs has been identified as an under-16 account. They have to use “kind and empathetic language” when they’re doing so because this is going to be a rough change for our 13 to 16 cohort who are having something taken away. They also have to have an appeals process, so that if someone over 16 gets caught up in it, they can appeal to say, “You got it wrong.”

Fitz: And what of the rest of us? My daughter tells me that I should be on something called BookTok, which I think is in turn the step-daughter once removed of TikTok. If, after December 10, I apply to get a TikTok account, will I, in some manner, have to prove that I’m over 16 and hand over my personal ID?

AK: No. It should be the case that TikTok already has easily enough data about you that you will not have to prove your age. But if, for some reason, that is unclear enough that they do ask, you absolutely do not have to provide your ID. It is in the law that the platform must offer you alternatives to prove your identity other than uploading your government ID.

Fitz: Let’s just say a 15-year-old is found to have put up a false account, or whatever. What will be the penalty, and does it fall on the child or the parents?

AW: No penalty for the child, no penalty for the parent. The onus is on the platforms to get it right. So that would be [a mark against] the platform for not working out that’s an underage account. But the penalties for platforms are for systemic breaches, not for individual breaches.

Fitz: What penalties do you envision? These multinational, multibillion-dollar tech companies are infamous for doing what they damn well please. How hard will you smack them for breaches?

AW: For systemic breaches it is [a fine] of up $49.5 million.

Fitz: And yet as I am sure you are aware, critics have said this is unworkable, that savvy young ones will have lined up false accounts for themselves before your tech enforcement officers have got their shoes on, to get out the door on the first morning?

AW: But it’s not tech enforcement officers. It is the smartest, richest companies in the world, the social media platforms, who must detect and deactivate these accounts to comply with the law. They have this technology already to harvest our data, sell it for advertising, etc. They know with deadly precision who you are, what you do, when you do it, who you do it with, because of all the data we voluntarily give them. All we are asking is that they use that same technology they have developed for their own purposes, to keep our kids safer online.

Fitz: And yet more than 140 academics in the field have signed an open letter calling this legislation a blunt instrument, that prioritises restrictions over rights. What do you say to that?

AW: That we are completely unapologetic about doing our best to keep kids safer online. The stats out there about the harms kids are suffering online are so alarming that we just have to have a crack at this, and I don’t resile from the fact that this will look untidy as we work through it. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve got a two-year study that the eSafety Commissioner is going to run from December 10 about how this has worked, where it has worked and not worked, what we need to do to improve it. But when seven out of 10 kids are seeing harm online – and [an available] answer is to do tangible measures like this to delay the start of social media usage from 13 to 16 – then the prime minister and I feel it’s too important not to have a crack.

Fitz: But despite parliament’s own committee noting an “unclear causal link”, between social media and youth mental health harms, the law proceeded without robust trials?

AW: I think the four mental health peak bodies, Kids Helpline, BeyondBlue, ReachOut and headspace, who consulted with the eSafety Commissioner forming up this legislation, would beg to disagree.

Fitz: OK. If this is too personal, I’m equally standing by to be smacked, but all of us have familial reference points for many of the decisions we make. In the realms of social media bans, are you guided by what you want for your own three children?

AW: Yes, but as a grassroots local MP – who still door knocks despite the fact I’m a cabinet minister – I have been struck by how much parents feel helpless against the absolute Wild West frontier that is kids on the internet. And when the prime minister and I announced the new rules in July, alongside some bereaved parents [who’d lost their children to social media], I was taken aback by how many positive responses I got from so many parents who went out of their way to say, thank you so much for having a go. Like we say, this is not a cure. But it’s at least another weapon in the parental arsenal, in a space where people have felt very helpless.

Fitz: In your family, do you have a screen time policy with your kids?

AW: Well, obviously none of them are on social media because they’re too young. And despite the fact I would prefer my eight-year-old not to be on an iPad, she has to have one for school these days. So, like so many families, whatever your own preferences are, it prompts this dynamic where all of a sudden you’ve got to start arguing about screen time, and what apps are allowed. I guess the personal reflection I’d give you is that while I’m sad I’m not there every night to monitor the usage – to get into what apps are and aren’t allowed – and that’s one of the sacrifices of my job, my contribution is that I am driving the law that will create cultural change for Generation Alpha.

Fitz: So, you’ve now ushered in two serious legacy reforms, with what you did with aged care in your last portfolio and now social media. What about another that would be of inestimable value to under-16s? What about banning wall-to-wall gambling advertising?

AW: You’re right this is an important issue and I’m continuing to have meetings with harm reduction advocates and broadcasters and sporting bodies about it. This issue matters to us which is why we have implemented some of the strongest harm reduction measures of any government.

Fitz: I think that will have to be for another robust discussion ... Meantime, I note that Treasurer Jim Chalmers has called you “future leader material”. Every now and then, when you’re at The Lodge, do you idly think, “I reckon the curtains would look better with a creamy colour?”

AK: [Laughing merrily.] When you say that, I immediately think of Peter Dutton before the last election [talking of his plans for Kirribilli House], and how well that went for him. So, no!

Fitz: Thank you for your time.

Peter FitzSimons is a columnist and author.

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