ORMOND-PARKER, Mr Lyndon, Co-Chair, First Nations Digital Inclusion Advisory Group [by video link] WEST, Ms Dorothy, Co-Chair, First Nations Digital Inclusion Advisory Group [by video link] [09:30] CHAIR: Welcome. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, I should advise you that this hearing is a legal proceeding of the parliament and therefore has the same standing as proceedings of the respective houses. The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. The evidence given today will be recorded by Hansard and attracts parliamentary privilege and is being broadcast live. I invite you to make a brief opening statement if you have one. Ms West : Thank you for the opportunity to attend the public hearing for the inquiry into racism, hate and violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The advisory group was established to provide advice on ways to support progress towards target 17 of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap: equal levels of digital inclusion for First Nations Australians by 2026. In 2024, we launched the First Nations digital inclusion roadmap, which provides recommendations to government and industry to achieve target 17. Digital inclusion includes the ability to be online safely and effectively. This is increasingly at risk given the rise of online harms, particularly on social media. The rise of online harms is making digital inclusion more important than ever before. These harms must be addressed and mitigated wherever possible. Equally important is a strong First Nations media and broadcasting sector, which provides a culturally safe space for information sharing and storytelling, as well as empowering our communities to speak in their own voices. CHAIR: Thank you very much. We'll proceed to questions and begin with the deputy chair, Mr Venning. Mr VENNING: Thank you for giving evidence this morning. Your submission argues digital inclusion must include protection from online racism. How should governments ensure increased connectivity does not inadvertently expose First Nations Australians to harm? Mr Ormond-Parker : The advisory group believes that racism, hate and violence directed at First Nations people is systematic and deeply embedded in online environments. In particular, social media platforms can accelerate reach, repetition and normalisation, meaning that the harm that once may have stayed local can now be scaled nationally in minutes, often with very little editorial control or accountability. The advisory group has observed the increasing prevalence of online racism following the 2023 Voice referendum, with behaviour including online slurs, the delegitimising of First Nations people, and coordinated pile-ons and abuse, often directed at First Nations journalists, presenters and leaders. Outcome 17 of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap emphasises that First Nations people must be able to access information and services to make informed decisions about their lives, which includes their participation in digital life. However, trust in information sources and online participation cannot be meaningful if digital spaces are perceived or deemed to be unsafe. The advisory group would like to emphasise that digital inclusion must ensure that First Nations people can participate in digital connectivity safely with dignity, without racial abuse and with the ability to shape the narratives that affect our lives. To your question, it's very important, along with connectivity, that First Nations people have the support through digital mentors in their community that can provide information to them around things like scams, participating in online social media platforms safely and how issues around online abuse can be and must be addressed. People must also understand the systems in place through the eSafety Commissioner to have racist and hateful information that is directed towards them taken offline when needed. Mr VENNING: If we look at the initiatives, in your view, what digital literacy initiatives have demonstrated the strongest outcomes in helping First Nations communities respond safely to online abuse? Ms West : I think it's about having place based solutions, not one size fits all. This is where we've been advocating for digital mentors within communities so that they can address the issues locally but also so that they can come up with innovative and deadly solutions to the community's needs. Mr VENNING: In terms of the platforms, the technology providers, you advocate for stronger platform accountability. What specific reporting or transparency obligations should be imposed on tech companies? Mr Ormond-Parker : I believe that tech companies should be able to address online hate and racism when it occurs and that they should be able to have a better moderation system in place. One of the critical questions concerns the availability of culturally safe online spaces for First Nations people. As mainstream media platforms continue to struggle with effectively addressing racism, hate speech and discriminatory behaviour, it becomes increasingly difficult for First Nations communities to identify and maintain secure digital environments for community engagement, cultural exchange and knowledge sharing. This raises important considerations regarding the number and type of platforms on which organisations share content and whether dedicated moderation resources are available to protect users from harmful interactions. Effective moderation requires sustained investment as large social media platforms often fail to adequately prevent or respond to racist abuse directed at First Nations people and content creators. Despite these challenges, our First Nations media organisations place a strong emphasis on moderation across all digital channels or simply turn off comments. In the case of organisations such as CAAMA in central Australia, their platforms are actively monitored despite having only one staff member responsible for overseeing seven platforms, including their website. Several of these platforms allow community comments and live interactions, requiring ongoing decisions about whether to disable engagement features or invest time and resources in monitoring them. In practice, they choose to actively moderate spaces to maintain a safe environment for their First Nations audiences. However, this responsibility places a significant burden on staff, particularly when moderation duties fall to young employees. Beyond the operational demands, moderators are regularly exposed to racist and hateful comments, requiring them to personally process and manage harmful material while ensuring their own continued safety in these spaces. Ms West : Additionally, if Aboriginal media organisations can do this on the smell of an oily rag, certainly big corporates can take responsibility for their platforms and ensure that safety is prevalent. Mr Ormond-Parker : And ensure that they're complying with the Racial Discrimination Act. Where they don't comply, penalties should be applied. Mr VENNING: I have a follow-up question in relation to some of these place based initiatives. If you look at the lens of remote communities, particularly the APY Lands or the Far West Coast, where we've got very low technical literacy in these communities, what do you see as the practical rollout of these place based initiatives? Do you expect to do it through the local schools or something else? What do you see as a practical solution? Mr Ormond-Parker : At the moment, from our research, what we find is that individual organisations in remote communities often play a role in supporting a digital mentor-type program, even though they're not actually paid to do that. It often falls on local community organisations to fulfil that role, even though that's not necessarily part of their mainstream funding. So what we hope with the digital mentors program that we're rolling out is that we can have dedicated people in communities that can then support the communities to get online and get online safely. So it's things like not only being able to get online and get online safely but also raising awareness of online harms such as what they call 'scambling'—gambling scams online—and other issues such as hateful abuse on social media and teaching people how to put things online safely. What's a good thing to put online? What's not a good thing to put online? Addressing these issues requires ongoing digital literacy for our First Nations communities so they don't become victims of online abuse and 'scambling'. Ms West : The other initiative that is being implemented is a tech hub so that information is available to communities. I suppose it will be a place of truth when we start dealing with telecommunications and other companies. So that's also supporting the local community and producing resources for those digital literacy mentors. CHAIR: Senator Thorpe. Senator THORPE: Thank you for appearing today. It's deadly that you exist, because it's such a big problem for our people, and I certainly know what racism looks like on my social media platforms. What should government and industry be doing that they're not already doing to keep our people safe online? Mr Ormond-Parker : One of the things is raising awareness of what's already available. So the eSafety Commissioner has some deadly resources online as well, but people don't necessarily know that's available. So some of it is about raising awareness. We've also got things like Telstra, who have a First Nations Indigenous call centre for things related to phones. We've got a lot of information out there right across many platforms, including the Regional Tech Hub, which is no longer being funded in the next round, but we've also got a lack in getting information out to the community. A part of getting information out to the community is ensuring that our First Nations media is utilised to get the message out there. I'll hand over to Ms West, as the expert in the First Nations media sector, to talk more about that. Ms West : Certainly, the advisory group does recommend greater and sustained investment in First Nations media and digital capability as a harm reduction measure. First Nations media and broadcasting is vital for self-determination, cultural preservation and reclaiming narratives. It's extremely vital that our community controlled media organisations are supported to do the job that they need to do in communities so that our communities have got a culturally safe place for information sharing and storytelling. These services empower communities to speak in their own voices. A strong media and broadcasting sector can become a defence against information flows which are racist, inappropriate, harmful and incorrect, to help counter misinformation as well as support our journalists and storytellers, who understand the lived consequences of harmful narratives. Similarly, our national Indigenous media services are just as important in counteracting this. Senator THORPE: I heard Mr Ormond-Parker talk about the tech hub not getting funded. So, when you provide this advice to government and industry, do they listen? Ms West : In terms of the tech hub, that's the Regional Tech Hub. First Nations people are getting supported with our own tech hub. Whilst the mainstream tech hub is being dismantled or is not getting funded, we are establishing a First Nations support hub. When we first established, and through our initial report, we were able to attract funding to the program of some $66 million. That included 20-odd remote communities having free community wi-fi. So it's had its momentum. What's been fantastic about the work that we've been doing is that we've been able to collaborate with industry and like-minded community groups to work in partnership to close the digital divide. Mr Ormond-Parker : When First Nations community wi-fi is installed, NBN has a program ensuring that there's a digital champion within each of those communities to work through some of these issues. Senator THORPE: Do you get complaints from communities, like I do, about Telstra and others cutting off internet access and keeping people literally without any connections—in remote communities, particularly? I've had a lot of complaints where, if there was something going on in that community, Telstra—it was Telstra in this case—would just shut off all communication. Do you have those kinds of complaints from community coming to you? Mr Ormond-Parker : I work on a project called Mapping the Digital Gap through RMIT University. Through our research, we've found that often where a remote community is reliant on only one service provider, such as Telstra, there is a huge impact when the Telstra network goes down. For instance, Wadeye in the Northern Territory were cut off earlier this year for almost, I think, eight to nine weeks. So there were complaints around that and that they weren't provided with a small cell in the community; they were reliant on satellite services. So we did hear complaints around being able to call triple zero and other issues as a result of that. But, thankfully, the Thamarrurr Development Corporation in Wadeye set up a digital hub of their own. They had their own satellite services through Starlink, so they were able to ensure that the community had forms of communication for those that were solely reliant on Telstra mobile phones. Senator THORPE: You talked earlier around the eSafety Commissioner's online reporting; I think you touched on that and our people not really knowing what's available to access. Do you think that our people trust mechanisms like the eSafety Commissioner's online reporting process? If so, how do you know? Should there be a blackfella line to the eSafety Commissioner so that people are talking to someone that they can trust, connect to and tell their story to? Mr Ormond-Parker : I think at this stage it's around levels of awareness of the eSafety Commissioner and the reporting process. In some instances where I've been in remote communities, we've had complaints about very severe online abuse directed at individuals, and they just weren't aware of their options to have the material taken down. So I think the education piece is the first step. The other side of that is that people are often distrustful of government agencies and reporting. There needs to be a more awareness of it. We hope to raise and deliver that awareness through the Network of Digital Mentors and the Digital Support Hub programs and also ensure that people are able to get online safely. Once they get online, we want them to have the tools to jump on a website and put in a complaint. That goes to the digital literacy piece as well. Ms West : The other component is that, as an advisory group, we also speak with the eSafety Commissioner, along with other mechanisms. Where we see issues, we highlight those issues and ask for that redress to occur or for something to, basically, get better in that space. Mr Ormond-Parker : Part of that is also ensuring that government advertising in this space gets directed towards our First Nations organisations and media sector, which we've advocated for. Ms West : Yes, and also that that advertising is produced by and for our people and is not some generic message that just gets switched off in the brain box. Senator THORPE: Speaking of which, does the eSafety Commissioner act on online reports and complaints that our people send through when they get racist abuse online? It's all right to tell your story, but what happens? Is there any action taken and what is that action? Mr Ormond-Parker : I think that's a question for the eSafety Commissioner. But, from my experience, the resources that they've developed over the last 12 to 18 months are fantastic. They are slightly generic. It would also be useful to have our community organisations reinterpret those resources. For instance, Yolgnu Radio could then do it in Yolgnu Matha so that local community organisations, especially where English isn't their first language, can repurpose those resources for their own communities. Whether that goes out through the TEABBA network or the CAAMA network, repurposed, is also around those organisations having the resources to be able to do that. Ms West : And the eSafety Commissioner does assist in the production of First Nations messages by our community, for our community, as well. Senator THORPE: I know that this might be a question for the eSafety Commissioner. To promote it to our people, I want to say, 'They've done this.' So ring up, complain and put the report in. Then I can say that this happened to this person or this mob or whatever. If we want to sell it to our people, then we need to also say that it works. I want to go back to your submission. You say in your submission that the automation of government services 'can result in discriminatory outcomes' for our people 'that are automated, opaque and difficult to challenge, reinforcing racism through technology'. What should government do about this, and what is government doing about this? Mr Ormond-Parker : This also speaks to AI. Our concern has been that artificial intelligence will also repeat the messaging of the past and will be slightly discriminatory in its approach if that's not addressed. I, personally, speaking as a professor at RMIT University, was disappointed that the guardrails around AI are not necessarily being taken seriously. We would like to see, when it comes to AI, being able to have some guardrails around that and addressing anything that comes up around racism directed towards our people. Senator THORPE: Thank you. CHAIR: Following on from Senator Thorpe's question, because I had a question very similar to hers, about algorithms and AI systems in decision-making processes, we've got some of the departments appearing today, and I wonder if you have any examples of where that's happening that we might be able to ask them about later. Mr Ormond-Parker : I think that's a question for the large tech companies. Are they using AI appropriately, or is the AI that they're using to take down racist, hurtful and harmful and illegal comments on social media, for instance—are their algorithms actually working to reduce that harm for our First Nations people? Ms West : Also, further on AI, I think it's vital that the Australian government address our ICIP rights, our Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property rights, and ensure that they are protected and that we are no longer raped and pillaged as a people again. It's about making sure our culture, our stories and our information aren't being utilised without any recompense or without even our people's approval of them being utilised. So that's one guardrail that really needs to be strong. CHAIR: Absolutely. What do you think social media companies—you're talking about algorithms and AI and even the people who work in them—understand about First Nations people and their experiences of racism in this country? Ms West : I wonder how much information they do have in regard to the oldest living culture in the world. I think the continual prevalence of racism and harm, whether that be on our streets or on social media or in mainstream media itself, is testament to the ignorance of who we are as First Peoples. CHAIR: Their lack of understanding about who we are and our experiences of racism—how harmful do you think that is for mob? Ms West : I think it's very harmful. I think what's important is making sure that these corporates, these institutions, have our people within their walls, basically, within their organisations, working alongside them—not necessarily as ticking a box of, 'Oh, we employ Indigenous people,' but making sure that, from the bottom to the top, to the board level—sitting at the decision-making table—there are First Nations people there so that then there is a greater understanding and appreciation and knowledge of who we are. CHAIR: You've probably heard this, and I've certainly heard it: there are people who say, 'Just don't read the comments.' Do you think that's good enough? Mr Ormond-Parker : Absolutely not. Ms West : No, it's not. It's not good enough. They are carrying racist information on their platforms and they need to be made accountable. CHAIR: Absolutely. Ms West : In terms of our media platforms, we know that our mainstream media can be a little bit slanted, but, if the racism were broadcast on those platforms, there would be redress. So why, then, can't there be redress on the social media platforms? They are public spaces, so there needs to be responsibility taken. Mr Ormond-Parker : I'm quite disappointed when I read, particularly on social media, our First Nations media or even mainstream media when they're reporting on Indigenous issues—they turn the comments off because they know that it's going to be too contentious and they don't want to be held responsible for racist comments, so the best way forward is for them to turn it off. That's what seems to be happening online at the moment, which is pretty sad. We can't have a discussion around a key issue amongst ourselves on a social media platform, because of the racist pile-on, and then companies aren't responding quick enough to that. Ms West : I wonder what it would look like to have our own First Nations social media platform. Senator THORPE: Can I ask a follow-up question. What is racism through these platforms and mainstream media doing to our people? We know it's racist, but what is the harm that is being caused? I don't think racists out there or even people out there understand: what does that do to somebody? Ms West : You're killing your liyan, your spirit. That's being killed off. There's hurt and pain, and also what is occurring is that continual intergenerational trauma continues. From the First Fleet right up until this day, racism plays a negative component into that intergenerational trauma that we continue to face as a people. Mr Ormond-Parker : Some people just choose, like me, to get off the social media platforms because you get sick of reading all the hurtful, hateful and racist comments—when I was an active social media user. It's a shame that that's what many First Nations people choose to do. I'm a passive user of news services and our First Nations media services. CHAIR: So what you're saying is First Nations people moderate their presence online to protect themselves from racism online— Mr Ormond-Parker : Yes. CHAIR: and then the other thing that you were saying before Senator Thorpe's follow-up was that social media pages or online news outlets turning off the comments to protect themselves from the consequences of racist comments is then limiting First Nations people's ability to participate online and to have conversations about things that might really matter to them. They're unable to do that, because the comment section is being turned off. Mr Ormond-Parker : That's correct. We have our brave organisations like CAAMA who choose to moderate, but the impact of that is cost, and the impact of that is the impact on their staff that have to moderate hurtful comments. CHAIR: So you're saying the balance to turning comments off is having moderators who look at the comments, and then it might get to midnight or whatever and it's unreasonable to expect somebody to be up overnight, so you might turn the comments off at that point— Mr Ormond-Parker : Correct. CHAIR: or use the other features available to you, like changing the settings for who can comment on a post, or whatever that might be? Mr Ormond-Parker : Yes. Ms West : There needs to be a concerted effort in that moderation, but there also needs to be serious redress if racist information is being published, because that's what it is: publishing. You're publishing in a public forum. CHAIR: I think there has been, certainly in recent weeks, some examples of racist so-called comedy being posted online which has done harm to mob. In instances like that, do you think it's appropriate that there is redress for the harm that is caused by somebody who has published online? Ms West : Yes, there needs to be action taken. But there also needs to be an avenue, such as the avenue of e-safety, where people can go and lodge their complaint—but also know that it's not just a rap over the knuckles. There are serious implications. Until this country takes implications on this matter seriously, we will continually be buried in racist attitudes and information. CHAIR: You're talking about there being real consequences, things with teeth. Do you see that happening both for individual users on social media platforms who might have a public page, an account, be the admin or be the creator of a page which then puts a whole bunch of harmful content online and for the company of Meta? What would you like to see Meta do in this space? Mr Ormond-Parker : A lot more than what they're currently doing in this space—and getting back to the comedy which you're referring to, which I think a lot of First Nations people have seen, I think people hide behind comedy when it's blatant racism. This is where companies need to take responsibility for the content that they keep up online. It also comes to—because they're global companies, I think that more should be done to protect our First Nations people through the mechanisms of things like the Racial Discrimination Act and the eSafety Commission. Ms West : Also, I think it's about, if we take a look at defamation law in this country and how we do not have free speech in this country—no matter how much people may think we do we don't, legally. But, in terms of defamation, for instance, if you defame someone to a third party, you can be sued. So maybe we need to go as far as that in terms of discrimination. CHAIR: At some stage we will be hearing from Meta through this inquiry, as you would expect, given it is a place where we all know mob experience an immense amount of harm due to racist content. But you point out the Call It Out register as a model platform that should be adopted. Can you explain to the committee why you think that's a good model to take? Ms West : I think it's a model that can be adopted. It's not necessarily the penultimate model, but it's a model. I think it's important that there is a number of different levels, different stages, that are applied here not only so that people can call it out but also so that there can be redress on it. CHAIR: That concludes the questions that we have for you this morning. There probably will be some questions on notice from committee members out of today. If and when they do come through, would you please forward answers to the secretariat by 17 July. You'll be sent a copy of the transcript of your evidence and you'll have an opportunity to request corrections to any transcription errors that you find. Thank you very much. We will now suspend for morning tea. Proceedings suspended from 10:09 to 10:33 .