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The financial documents make no mention of a potential ban in Australia. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said his government has no plans to move beyond existing rules that forbid ministers and government officials using TikTok on phones containing sensitive information.
Coalition cybersecurity and home affairs spokesman James Paterson, however, has labelled TikTok a “bad-faith actor” and urged the government to join other countries in trying to remove the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on its operations.
Senator James Paterson.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The company’s Australian general manager of advertising Brett Armstrong said last week there was no reason for the TikTok app to be banned locally.
He pointed to a report from Oxford Economics and paid for by TikTok that claimed TikTok had contributed more than $1 billion in value to Australia’s GDP.
“TikTok is a platform that is loved by over 8.5 million Australians and 350,000 Australian businesses, with a recent independent study by Oxford Economics finding that we contribute $1.1 billion and 13,000 jobs to the Australian economy,” Armstrong said in a statement.
“There is zero evidence suggesting that TikTok is in any way a national security risk, and we welcome the Prime Minister’s recent comments that his government has no plans to ban us.”
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Armstrong is now one of TikTok’s most prominent Australian executives after the company opted against replacing Lee Hunter, TikTok’s Australian general manager, who departed earlier this year. Hunter, a former Google and YouTube executive, had served as the local public face of TikTok since May 2020.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is also considering launching a full investigation into TikTok following revelations in this masthead that its “pixel”, which is used by advertisers, is harvesting users’ data including email addresses, mobile phone numbers and browsing histories without their knowledge or consent, in a potential breach of the nation’s privacy laws.
“The information-handling practices of social media companies is a matter of regulatory priority for the OAIC,” commissioner Angelene Falk told a Senate estimates hearing in March.
“Upon examination of TikTok’s response, a decision will need to be made as to whether further regulatory action is warranted, and also whether any other action is warranted in relation to other entities that might be utilising this pixel.”
TikTok has denied any wrongdoing, saying in a statement that tracking pixels were “an industry-wide tool used to improve the effectiveness of advertising services”.
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