Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. Social media has transformed how humans spend their time and how we communicate. The online world is, for many young people, a preferred place to access information, to build social and technical skills, to connect with our families and friends, to learn about the world, to relax and to play. These opportunities are really important in the transition to adulthood, but social media has well documented and significant risks for children and young people. These risks do need to be addressed by government.

In recent months both major political parties in Australia have rushed to ban social media access for young people. Their proposals are broad in scope but short on detail. They abdicate all responsibility to digital providers. They are not evidence based, they risk being utterly ineffectual and they risk potentially significant unintended consequences. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child states:

National policies should be aimed at providing children with the opportunity to benefit from engaging with the digital environment and ensuring their safe access to it.

Whether bans are practically possible remains debatable. There are significant concerns regarding privacy, data and consent. Bans could well create more risk for children who still use platforms, because they will remove the incentives to ensure robust child safety features for those younger users who evade age assurance measures. Bans will not improve those products which children will still be allowed to use.

What is the problem here? The fact that we in this country allow billion-dollar companies to market unsafe digital products, or the fact that some of the people who use those products are teenagers? Experts have suggested that we should look at more targeted interventions rather than rushing to poorly considered, technically challenging blanket bans on social media access. Systemic regulation can drive up safety and privacy standards on all platforms for all children, and this approach has been supported by expert groups in mental health, digital literacy and child psychology.

For that reason, I am happy to support the member for Goldstein's proposal to amend the Online Safety Act to impose an overarching standard of care for large providers. This will mandate risk assessments and risk mitigation plans, mandatory transparency and reporting, and stringent enforcement mechanisms. It will protect our children. Something worth doing is worth doing well, in an evidence-balanced way. If the government accepts this bill today, we will start protecting young children immediately. I commend it to the House.

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