Albo eyes an algorithm off switch + Blowing the whistle on KPMG

**Chris Spyrou** (0:08)
Hey, Chris Spyrou with you. Welcome to The Briefing. A consulting firm with very lucrative government contracts has become the latest to be embroiled in a scandal that involves a whistleblower, a parliamentary inquiry and some of the country's biggest companies.

**Daniel Ziffer** (0:22)
It's been a real erosion of trust from people in supreme senior positions who absolutely knew what they were doing, and they certainly knew that what they were doing was not right.

**Chris Spyrou** (0:35)
That deep dive into the latest with KPMG and why you should care about it is coming up in the second half of this episode. First, let's get into the headlines with Sacha Barbour Gatt. It's Tuesday, the first of September.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (0:49)
Hey, Chris, happy start to spring. Pinch and a punch for the first of the month. I don't know why you find that so amusing and then you're supposed to go for a hit and a kick for being so quick.

**Chris Spyrou** (0:59)
Yeah, well, I didn't, but thank you so much for both of those.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (1:02)
You're too young to remember. All right. We could soon be able to opt out of the algorithm on social media in a move being looked at by the Albanese government. The Prime Minister says Labor is looking at the best and most practical ways to protect Australians, telling Nine Papers he wants people to have more control over what lands on their screens. Now, his comments follow those of Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek on Sunday, who said the government was working with youth-led group Teach Us Consent on how an opt-in or opt-out system might actually work.

**Chris Spyrou** (1:34)
It will most likely be part of next month's digital duty of care laws, and it's expected to be an opt-out feature rather than an opt-in. And that's partly to head off claims of government overreach from voters and to avoid poking the big tech giants who are close to the Trump administration.
Meantime, we've also got more clarity on Labor's new privacy laws which we were talking about yesterday and whether they'll cover smart glasses. A quick reminder, these are the laws which will include a right to erasure plus a new tool called IDLock, giving us more say over how our personal documents get stored and used online and essentially giving us the ability to get it all removed when we want it all removed from platforms.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (2:15)
Attorney General Michelle Rowland says banning the controversial AI glasses and smart glasses isn't on the table in this consultation, but she hasn't ruled out other measures encouraging local governments to follow in the example of Brisbane City Council, which last week banned people from secretly filming with smart glasses at public pools. So yeah, no plans yet. But also the point to make is that this consultation around privacy laws, that doesn't cover import bans. It's not actually something that they could legislate or propose legislation around an import ban in this particular set of legislation. So we weren't going to see that no matter what.

**Chris Spyrou** (2:54)
Interestingly, we also heard from the Privacy Commissioner, Carly Kynes. She said that the Privacy Act might not be the best way to introduce a ban altogether. So again, to that point of like, it's not part of this consultation, but the government's not completely ruling it out. And of course, that's because of pressure from the Greens and some independents that they want to ban the import of these glasses. Michelle Rowland, though, she did say that the government doesn't want to play a whack-a-mole when it comes to emerging techs. And she doesn't want to be like going through this thing and just banning it as it comes along. She just wants that overall blanket rules and laws that can cover a bunch of them. And she doesn't want to be coming in with new laws that are vague and wouldn't cover new technologies. So sounds like, I mean, it's a mix, right? It sounds like the government kicking the can down the road, like we were speaking about off air earlier, or is this the government trying to think it through? Or is this the government hearing the chatter and going, oh shit, now we have to act?
I don't know.

**Sacha Barbour Gatt** (3:50)
Yeah, well, it's like with the gambling laws, it feels like there's so many interests at play. And you mentioned they're big tech, you know, not wanting overreach from governments and also voters, not wanting to have that same government overreach. I do think though the algorithm issue is really interesting. We actually deep dived this with Chanel Contos, who's speaking at the National Press Club tomorrow. She runs Teach Us Consent and she has been huge on the front foot of this campaign, which is actually called Fix Our Feeds. Now, her push involves allowing us to not have to engage with the algorithm at all.