Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher

GALLAGHER: So, we’ve released some data, which we’ve collected over the last three months, from a number of social media accounts that members and senators have on the government’s side. And what that shows is just the volume of abuse and threats against MPs and senators across all of our platforms and the fact that this tool, we’re using it to help us deal with the volume of that abuse and threats, but also to just give a sense of the nature of what work’s like now coming in as an MP and senator and dealing with the online abuse. And again, I should say it’s not just about politicians’ working life, what’s happening to us is no different to what’s happening to a lot of other workers across Australia. And I guess we’re trying to make the point that enough’s enough. We need to deal with this and the platforms need to take some responsibility for what’s going on on their platforms.

JOURNALIST: The threats themselves, the MPs that have been impacted, do you find that it is more targeted towards women and female politicians?

GALLAGHER: Well, it’s largely been used by women at the moment, although men are able to use the tool if they choose. But I think all MPs and senators get this abuse and threats of violence. But the nature of abuse towards women members of Parliament is slightly different. So it tends to be more sexualised in nature, more threats around harming your children and your family. And I think that’s what we’re capturing in this data.

JOURNALIST: We’re seeing that nine MPs will have their electorate offices upgraded. Is that reflective of the environment that we’re in at the moment, and could more MPs see upgrades as well?

GALLAGHER: Look, I think that’s probably the case. So we’ve had a number of feedback last week around some concerns individual MPs and senators had about safety of their electorate office, those are being expedited in terms of addressing those problems. But I would think, you know, security for members of Parliament more broadly across work, home and out and about in the community is something that’s been raised consistently in the last week and we have to have a think about it.

JOURNALIST: On your portfolio, how much of a hole has this tobacco excise punched into the budget and, again, does that give you any cause for thought as to lowering the excise?

GALLAGHER: So on this, we had revised that in the budget and it it’s certainly decreased considerably in the last few budgets. We’ll update that again in my MYEFO as normal. I mean, we are looking at a range of ways to deal with what we’re seeing with the illegal tobacco market in Australia. I think one of the things that we’re dealing with, and the Home Affairs Minister is dealing with, is enforcement and compliance, and that will remain a focus for us.

JOURNALIST: So again, from a budgetary point of view, there’s not really any measures that you’re looking at on that front. It’s more around enforcement.

GALLAGHER: Our focus has been enforcement, but we keep this matter under review.

JOURNALIST: I think the Australian Financial Review will release an analysis today, basically saying which household items have gone up the most. I think insurance has gone up about 40% since COVID, eggs, tobacco again has gone up 50% as well. Again, is the government doing enough to try and support people given how much those have increased, particularly compared to real wages not going at the same rate?

GALLAGHER: Yeah, I mean, we accept and we know that households are under real pressure now, inflation is higher than we would like and it’s been that way for longer than we would like. I mean, we on the one hand having calls to cut government spending, on the other hand, having calls to increase support for cost of living. Our job is to balance the needs of households with the job that we’ve got to do to make sure the budget’s doing what it needs to do in an environment where inflation is higher than we would like. But I think if you go back and have a look at the investments we’ve made, where we have made those investments in Medicare, in medicines, in energy bill relief, in what we’ve done on pensions and payments. It’s all been about trying to help people with the cost of living in an environment where costs are going up, but we’ve got a big job ahead of us. We’re going to look at savings in my MYEFO and that will be released before the end of the year.

JOURNALIST: Thank you.