Transcript - ABC Melbourne Drive

ALI MOORE: Jason Clare is the Federal Minister for Education. Jason Clare, welcome to the program. 

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: G'day, great to be here. 

MOORE: As a senior Government minister, can I start by asking you about the re‑election of Donald Trump. Were you surprised? 

CLARE: First of all, congratulations to Donald Trump on his election, it was a clear result. I think many people around the world expected that he would win yesterday, as indeed he did. The Prime Minister's already congratulated him, and I understand they've had a conversation this morning. 

MOORE: Did you expect him to win?  

CLARE: You never know in these things, that's the nature of democracy, but it did seem in the weeks leading up to the election that he was the favourite. 

MOORE: So how do you see the impact of a second Trump Presidency on this country? I mean there's a whole lot of areas we could look at, but a swathe of tariffs that he's promised which could certainly hurt Australia economically, domestic issues that he's promised to focus on could have implications for geopolitics in this region. How do you see it? 

CLARE: I don't think it changes the essential nature of the relationship between our countries. America and Australia are great allies and friends, national security issues bind us together, but so does our economic relationship, and more importantly, our values. We're two of the world's great democracies, and I don't think that that will change. 

This is bigger than who's in The White House or who's in The Lodge or which political party is in charge or one country or the other. We've seen that in who has held those offices over the course of the last century, and I don't expect that to change. 

MOORE: Is it though bigger? I mean do you as a Government share the values of Donald Trump? 

CLARE: What I'm saying here is it is bigger than one person, this is the values of the United States and the values of Australia, two countries that are liberal democracies, that believe in democracy. And that's why, whether it's a Labor Government in Australia and a Republican Government in the United States or vice versa, if it's a Coalition Government here and a Democratic Government in the United States, we've seen that relationship go from strength to strength. 

MOORE: Australia's Ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, who's not been that praising of Donald Trump in the past, today has actually deleted a series of old Tweets that did criticise Donald Trump. Do you think maybe he's left that a little late; he should have removed them beforehand to prevent any perception, if not reality, that he was expressing Australia's view? 

CLARE: Look, I think Kevin's doing a great job as Ambassador for us in the United States ‑‑ 

MOORE: But that wasn't the question. Do you think he should have deleted these a little earlier? 

CLARE: The answer to your question, Ali, is number one, I think he's doing a great job. Number two, that is evidenced by the work that he has done over the course of the last year or so working with Republicans and Democrats in the United States. 

Look at the AUKUS legislation that's passed through the Congress with bipartisan support, in large part because of the work that Kevin has done for us in the United States. 

MOORE: Minister, if I can look at the social media ban that's been announced today, if you're under 16 under your legislation you'll be barred from using social media. You had said that you wouldn't commit to an age until the trial of verification technology was done. So what's the trial told you and how has it informed 16 as the age? 

CLARE: That trial will happen next year. The age of 16's been informed by consultation with the States, the Prime Minister's been consulting with States around the country, because we want to make sure that this is a national approach, as well as with experts in this area. 

If you talk to parents around the country, with children in high school, or even in primary school, I know it myself as a parent with kids in primary school, that the impact of social media on our children is real. We want to get them out of this cesspit of social media ‑‑ 

MOORE: So all the States have said to you we'll back it if you go for 16? 

CLARE: National Cabinet's meeting tomorrow, but certainly we've had States come back to us with advice, and a lot of that advice is telling us that 16 is the right age. At the moment there's nominally an age of 13 where social media companies are not supposed to have young people on their platforms. We know that doesn't really exist in any practical sense operating at the moment. 

But a lot of the feedback, both from the States, from experts, from parents, and I've got to tell you from young people I talk to in high schools, you'd expect that I'd do this, and I do when I visit schools, is that 16 is about the right age. 

MOORE: So how will a ban work? You've announced legislation, you've announced an age. How is it going to work? 

CLARE: What the Prime Minister said today is that the obligations will be placed on the social media companies to enforce this and to take reasonable steps to make sure that this happens. 

We don't want to put the pressure on parents. The intention is the reverse, to take the pressure off parents, and that there will be a one year implementation process. Legislation to implement this will be introduced into the Parliament before the end of the year. 

MOORE: But that's not really an answer of how it's going to work. If the onus on the social media platform, how are they going to do it? How are they going to make sure that, you know, kids, as kids do, aren't getting around the system? 

CLARE: Yeah. And inevitably there will be some people who will try to get around the system. As I think the PM said at his press conference this morning, there's a legal limit that you can't drink alcohol until you're 18, but the fact is there are young people who drink alcohol before 18 one way or another. 

MOORE: But it still goes back to enforcement. I mean how are you possibly going to enforce it? How will the social media companies enforce it? How will they know that, you know, the person who says they're 16 is 16? 

CLARE: No, that's right. And they do a bit of this already, they could do it better, that's what the age assurance trial will be all about, and if they don't take it seriously, then there will be increased penalties that will be part of the legislation that we introduce. 

MOORE: You've tried to take X to court before, it hasn't worked so well. 

CLARE: What are you suggesting, Ali, that we just give up? 

MOORE: I'm suggesting that you might have a hard time trying to fine the social media giants. 

CLARE: I think it's worth it, I really do, I really do. You see story after story in the media about the impact that social media is having on young people in this country, you've got two options; you wipe your hands and you say that, "This is all too hard, government can't help", or you get in there and you do something about it, and that's what we're doing. 

MOORE: There are of course though, there are other ways, Jason Clare, and a number of experts have argued that there's a real risk that if you put a ban in place like you are intending to do, kids will simply go behind their parents' back, and that in turn runs an even bigger risk that if they do that and something awful happens, they won't speak to their parents, or they won't tell any adult, because they'll be, you know, what they're doing is against the law and they'll know that. 

CLARE: This is world‑leading legislation, no other country has done this as a nation, no doubt about that, but I sincerely believe ‑‑ 

MOORE: But that doesn't address that issue. 

CLARE: ‑ well, hang on a sec, Ali, you asked me a question, I'll give you the answer. I sincerely believe that by doing this, this will substantially reduce the number of young people in the country that have access to social media and whose lives are being negatively affected by it. 

Does it mean that every child won't access it? No. But it does mean, I'm sure that you would agree, will mean that for a lot of young people, they won't be adversely affected by, you know, by the toxic nature of social media that we see impacting our kids right now. 

MOORE: Just a final question on this. There's no exemption for kids under 16 who already have an account, but also if a parent gives their permission, that that will make no difference at all. You don't think this is something that parents should have control of; are they not capable of deciding whether their children can handle social media or not? 

CLARE: It's all about trying to make sure you don't put the pressure back on the parents. You don't want a situation where young people are saying, "mum, dad, if only you say yes, I can access it". A lot of young people have told me, "look, the only reason I'm on social media is because my friends are on social media, even though everything that I see there makes me feel worse, and if all of my friends aren't on it, then I won't feel like I need to be on it either". 

And so part of making this work is taking the pressure off parents and taking the pressure off young people to feel like they need to be there in the first place. 

MOORE: You are listening to the Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare, and Jason Clare, you've made a lot of announcements around education in the last week, particularly around HECS and knocking 20 per cent off HECS bills. 

In the context of cost of living, we've talked about that in relation to the US election, cutting the debt doesn't actually help students right now, does it? I mean they still have to repay the same amount because that's based on proportion of salary, not debt?  

CLARE: We did two things, Ali, the first thing we announced was to change the amount that you have to earn before you start repaying your HECS debt. At the moment it's $54,000, we're lifting that to $67,000. 

The other policy that we announced on the weekend was what you just pointed out, which is cutting everyone's debt by 20 per cent, that's the 3 million people right across the country. 

MOORE: Is the bigger issue here around the cost of degrees, and on that, do you think the Jobs Ready Graduates program of the Opposition when they were in Government, it was introduced, increased the cost of the humanities and the arts degrees, do you think that was bad policy? 

CLARE: Well, it's failed, and the evidence is pretty clear that it's failed. If the intention of it was to stop people or to reduce the number of people doing humanities courses, then it hasn't worked, more people are doing those courses today than before they implemented those changes, and that in a sense isn't surprising, Ali, because people do the courses they're interested in and that they love. 

MOORE: So why haven't you changed it? Why is it still there? 

CLARE: We're doing this in stages. The first step is to fix the way HECS is indexed. The second stage, the next step is what we announced on the weekend, which is to cut everyone's debt by a further 20 per cent, but there is more to do. 

You talk about Job Ready Graduates. What I've told the Parliament and what we said in the budget is that the next step here is to set up an Australian Tertiary Education Commission, that's a body that will look at how we do a number of things, including provide us with advice on the setting of course fees. 

MOORE: But I guess there's the two things there, the cut to the debt, the 20 per cent cut, and the Commission which would lead to fixing things like what you call failed policy of the Jobs Ready Graduates program. They are only being dangled as election pledges. You have to be re‑elected for them to happen. Why not just do them? 

CLARE: We've got six education bills in the Senate right now. I mentioned one of them, that's the one that reduces HECS debt. 

MOORE: Sure, but not those big things. I mean the thing ‑‑

CLARE: They're big, Ali. There's a bill that just passed through the House of Representatives about 20 minutes ago that increases funding for public schools across the country. There's a bill that passed the House of Representatives on Monday that increases the pay for early educators across the country by 15 per cent. 

MOORE: Sure. I'm not questioning that, but my point is if you're saying that it's so important that we do address this issue, you're promising a 20 per cent cut in HECS debts, you're promising to have cheaper degrees, but only if you're re‑elected. If they are so important, you're the Government, why not just do them? 

CLARE: These are all parts, Ali, of a report that I got at the start of this year called the Universities Accord; a blueprint to how we reform our higher education system to make it better and fairer. It's 47 recommendations, it's a big report. It's going to take more than a decade to implement the whole report. We've bitten off a big chunk of it this year in the budget, 29 recommendations in part, or in full. 

But we're going to have to implement these reforms in stages, and what we've said is if we win the next election, the first piece of legislation that we'll introduce will be legislation to cut the student debt by 20 per cent for 3 million Australians across the country. 

MOORE: Jason Clare, thank you very much for talking to Drive. 

CLARE: Thanks Ali.