Opposition home affairs spokesperson James Paterson does not want the Commonwealth to advertise on Chinese-owned social media app, TikTok.

Paterson has reportedly written to Finance Minister Katy Gallagher in response to reports that the Department of Finance will soon trial government advertising campaigns on TikTok, despite the device ban. 

Paterson's letter stated that “a government advertising policy that permits taxpayer dollars to support a platform which presents such significant national risks is untenable”. 

The Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, chaired by Senator Paterson, is currently investigating various social media platforms. 

These include US-headquartered Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), Google, Snapchat, Twitter, and Chinese-owned messaging app, WeChat. 

The committee has heard from Seth Kaplan, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, who stated that WeChat, owned by Chinese tech firm Tencent, posed a significant security risk to Australia. 

The Department of Finance is responsible for approving spending on government advertising campaigns. 

Although the department has approved the use of TikTok, no trials have gone ahead. 

A spokeswoman for Gallagher confirmed that Paterson's letter had been received on Friday morning and that the correspondence would be considered in due course. 

A TikTok spokeswoman defended the platform, saying that calls to ban government advertisers on the platform were “ridiculous” and that a wide range of brands, businesses, and not-for-profits find great success using TikTok to connect with their millions of users. 

TikTok denies any links to the Chinese Communist Party and says it would never cooperate with China’s government. However, Western governments remain concerned about TikTok and political interference from China via the platform. 

Earlier this month, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus issued a directive banning TikTok on government-issued devices based on advice from intelligence and security agencies. 

However, the directive included caveats for legitimate business reasons to have the app, including “where an entity must use the application to reach key audiences to undertake marketing or public relations activity on behalf of the entity”. 

Paterson acknowledged that the directive permitted the use of TikTok for legitimate business reasons but argued that allowing the government to advertise on the platform created “unnecessary risk and is fundamentally inconsistent with Australian government’s broader position given what we know about the risk inherent with the use of the application”.