Telstra fined over spam law breaches
Jonathan Barrett
Telstra has paid a $626,000 penalty after sending more than 10 million text messages that breached Australia’s spam laws, the telecommunications regulator said today.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) said most of the texts required recipients to provide personal information in order to opt out. Acma member Samantha Yorke said:
Consumers must be able to unsubscribe without giving businesses more personal information than is required.
Australian laws generally prevent businesses from requiring consumers to log into accounts or provide personal information in order to unsubscribe from receiving commercial messages.
The regulator said Telstra had self-reported the matter.
Acma said its subsequent investigation found that Telstra sent 10,433,812 texts between 2022 and 2024 that breached the relevant spam laws.
Key events
Trans asylum seeker ‘threatened with deportation’
Unions and civil society groups will hold a press conference in Sydney at 10.30am this morning in response to claims by a trans asylum seeker that she is being threatened with deportation under the University of Sydney’s new rules on campus protests.
University of Sydney student representative council, Students for Palestine, Pride in Protest, the NSW Greens, and Queer Unionists in Tertiary Education will hold a press conference at Victoria park, Camperdown.
The student, known as Luna, has claimed she is being investigated over alleged misconduct that could result in her suspension or expulsion from the university. She is on a 500 subclass visa which depends on her enrolment and therefore risks being sent back to Malaysia if she is found to have breached rules by allegedly writing pro-Palestine slogans on university whiteboards.
She told the everythignisfine newsletter:
As a transgender woman, I have been denied access to gender-affirming care, including hormone replacement therapy, in Malaysia and can only access essential health care in Australia…the threat of suspension is a direct threat of life-threatening violence.
Josh Taylor
WhatsApp, Reddit and Threads took more than 24hrs to respond to user reports of terror content
Continuing from our last post: Julia Inman Grant said there were also inconsistencies with how tech companies applied so-called hashing technology to detect when such content was re-uploaded to its services, with Google only using exact matches, not matches on altered versions uploaded.
Telegram also reportedly did not use external databases of known terror content in its detection scheme.
The report also found that WhatsApp, Reddit and Threads took over 24 hours to respond to user reports of terror content, including up to 2.5 days for Threads.
Google also reported that between 1 April 2023 and 29 February 2024, there were 258 user reports of suspected AI-generated deepfake terrorist content generated by its AI system Gemini, and 86 user reports of suspected AI generated child abuse content.
Josh Taylor
eSafety regulator warns tech companies haven’t got tech to automatically detect terror content
The Australian online safety regulator has warned that tech companies have not implemented technology to automatically detect when terror content is being livestreamed on their services, six years on from the Christchurch terror attacks.
The warning came with the release of the transparency reports from Google, Meta, WhatsApp (a Meta company), Telegram and Reddit on what the platforms are doing to tackle terror and child abuse content.
The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said of the responses:
Telegram, WhatsApp and Meta’s Messenger did not employ measures to detect livestreamed terrorist and violent extremism despite the fact that the 2019 Christchurch attack was livestreamed on another of Meta’s services, Facebook Live.
We are concerned about the safety deficiencies that still exist in Facebook today, with users unable to report livestreamed [terror content] in-service if they are watching without being logged in. A user not logged in to YouTube faces the same hurdle.
Aussie dollar up this morning
The Aussie dollar is up this morning at US63.02c, or 0.58%, as the US dollar fell back.
Having said that, the picture could change around quite quickly with reports that the Trump administration is alraady considering watering down its newly imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico because of concern about their impact on the US economy.
On the other side of the Atlantic, European shares soared after the German government tore up its fiscal rules and announced a huge increase in defence and infrastructure spending.
So an interesting day awaits for the ASX. Further reading here from our economic editor in London:
Independent calling on major parties to commit to legislating national climate risk
Krishani Dhanji
Independent MP Zali Steggall is calling for Labor and the Coalition to commit to legislating national climate risk and adaptation plans, that would unlock more funding for climate mitigation infrastructure.
As Tropical Cyclone Alfred threatens thousands of homes across south-east Queensland (see our separate live blog), Steggall said families are at risk of “financial ruin” from soaring insurance costs.
The government is preparing its national climate resilience and adaptation strategy with the current strategy, released in 2021, expiring this year.
Steggall said there’s not enough investment in climate resilience, and wants billions of dollars to be available for climate mitigation projects, that would also help lower insurance costs.
She also wants legislation to more regularly update climate risk and adaptation plans and for them to be done independently of government.
Australians are being forced to gamble with their future because escalating climate risk is making insurance unaffordable. Families, businesses and our entire economy are all at risk.
We have a clear choice: act now to build resilience, lower insurance costs and protect lives and livelihoods, or leave Australians and our economy vulnerable to financial ruin… Every dollar spent on resilience saves up to eleven dollars in recovery costs.
$1bn fund for domestic violence victims opens
Dan Jervis-Bardy
A $1bn fund for crisis accommodation for women and children fleeing domestic violence will open this week, as Labor pledges more support for homelessness advocacy groups if it wins the federal election.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, emerged from a national cabinet meeting last May with a major commitment to boost emergency housing for victims of family violence. Almost 12 months on, Housing Australia will open applications for funding to build or convert existing properties into crisis accommodation.
The housing and homelessness minister, Clare O’Neil, said:
The biggest reason women and children don’t leave dangerous situations is because they don’t have stable and secure housing to go to. That’s not good enough. Labor is committed to helping some of the most vulnerable Australians secure that most fundamental need – a roof over their heads.
Labor has also pledged $6.2m for homelessness peak bodies to continue their advocacy if it wins the upcoming federal election. O’Neil said:
There is more work to do, but these two announcements today will make a real difference to women and children escaping family and domestic violence, and people at risk of homelessness.
Telstra fined over spam law breaches
Jonathan Barrett
Telstra has paid a $626,000 penalty after sending more than 10 million text messages that breached Australia’s spam laws, the telecommunications regulator said today.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) said most of the texts required recipients to provide personal information in order to opt out. Acma member Samantha Yorke said:
Consumers must be able to unsubscribe without giving businesses more personal information than is required.
Australian laws generally prevent businesses from requiring consumers to log into accounts or provide personal information in order to unsubscribe from receiving commercial messages.
The regulator said Telstra had self-reported the matter.
Acma said its subsequent investigation found that Telstra sent 10,433,812 texts between 2022 and 2024 that breached the relevant spam laws.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories before Emily Wind picks up the slack.
We’ve got another blog going with all your latest Tropical Cyclone Alfred updates – you can find that here:
A $1bn fund for crisis accommodation for women and children fleeing domestic violence will open this week, as Labor pledges more support for homelessness advocacy groups if it wins the federal election. We’ll have more on that soon.
One of our top stories this morning reveals that the top 16 tech companies are collectively making $26.7bn in revenue each year from Australians, prompting the Greens to call for a 3% tax on the biggest players.
It comes as the online safety regulator announces that the top tech firms have not implemented technology to automatically detect when terror content is being livestreamed on their services, six years on from the Christchurch terror attacks. More coming up, plus Telstra has been fined $600,000 after spamming Australians with more than 10 million texts.
