Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, and it is a great pleasure for me to do so. At the outset, it's important to start with how we have landed here. We have landed here because we have had social media, in some form or other, for around 20 years. Successive governments have given social media platforms the opportunity to self-regulate. They have failed to do so. I heard the honourable member for New England draw the comparison with the gun legislation that was rightfully brought in by the Howard government and led by former prime minister Howard after the dreadful massacre in Port Arthur. That was nation changing and changed the way that we as a country looked at possession of guns. That was the right decision for our nation. The social media platforms have proven to be completely recalcitrant on this. Four decades ago, when we didn't have seatbelts in cars, the legislators in those days had a similar problem with car manufacturers, who said: 'It will be too expensive to put seatbelts into cars. It is not really that much of an issue. People are dying from other injuries, not just from not wearing seatbelts. It's too hard to regulate. It's going to make cars too expensive.' Thankfully, the parliament of those times had the courage to stand up to the car manufacturers and say: 'No. In the national interest, we must prevent people from dying from chest injuries or being rendered permanently paraplegic or quadriplegic through their injuries in car accidents.' We regulated it. The sky didn't fall in, and now our cars are safer than they have ever been. Indeed, cars are now sold on the basis of safety features.

This is legislation that is completely necessary for us to change the course for our young people. This legislation broadly aims to set a minimum age of 16 for Australians to hold social media accounts. It requires age-restricted social media companies to take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users from having an account with their social media platform. The entire objective of this legislation is to reduce the harm that social media is causing to young people. When we hear reports of 11- and 12-year-olds taking their own lives because of bullying or because of some of the material that they are being subjected to on social media, it is time that we said, 'We as the adults in this place, as federal legislators, must say no. We must stand up for our children. We cannot allow what social media platforms have allowed onto their sites to continue.'

This is, at first breath, about protecting our children going forward. Secondly, this empowers parents. I know, as a parent, the hardest word to say to your children is no. But when it is the hardest to say is also the time when it is the most necessary to say it. Some of the arguments that have been put up against this legislation, to me, simply don't make sense. I'll say this particularly. I was here for the member for Mackellar's speech. I have a lot of respect for the honourable member, but a couple of the arguments that have come about have been around children with disabilities or cutting off vulnerable youths from supports that are only on social media. Don't we then have to change it so that those supports are available in other forums?

This is not a ban on the internet; this is a ban on social media platforms for children under the age of 16, because they are children. We have various other laws for our children. We say to them, 'You cannot drive a car under the age of 16,' because we know that that is too dangerous. We say, 'You cannot smoke cigarettes.' We say, 'You cannot drink alcohol.' We say, 'You should not be having sex under the age of 16.' These laws have all come into place over a period of time where our society has come to a point where it has been necessary to bring in prohibitions. I am not usually a person who wants prohibitions brought in, but they must be brought in when the danger of prohibition is far less than the danger that the activity that is to be prohibited is currently causing.

I can't recall, at the age of 11 or 12, knowing what suicide was. The fact that Australian 11- and 12-year-old boys and girls now not only know what suicide is but know how to take their own lives, and are taking their own lives, is an absolute tragedy, and we are in a place now where we can do something to prevent it, so we need to do something to prevent it.

In response to the argument that some kids are still going to get onto social media, I say: okay, but why are we making the perfect the enemy of the good in this? Some kids under the age of 16 still drive cars. Some kids under the age of 18 still drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or do other things that we do not want them to do. But this legislation gives parents back control. They can say: 'No, you cannot be on this. You can't be on Instagram or Snapchat, because it is against the law.' My boys now are 18, and I just wish that this law had been in place when my husband and I were grappling with this when they were younger. We tried everything to keep them off social media, but parents these days are working. Their kids come home and are on their phones, and parents cannot be sitting there with their children 24 hours a day looking at what they are watching. Indeed, they shouldn't be. So this gives parents the ability to say no.

The other argument that I just cannot accept is: 'But what about the 13- and 14-year-olds who are currently on social media? We're now going to have to say to them, "You have to come off it."' Yes, that's exactly right. We're the adults. We're the parents. We have to say, 'Yes, 14-year-old, it's now the law; you have to come off it.' Then they can go and whinge to all of their friends, because this is a time when parents have to have the ability to unite and say, 'No, we are all, as a wall here, saying no.' That's what it gives parents. It gives parents back control, and it gives parents the ability to not be the only parent in the group who says, 'No, you cannot be on social media.' That's why this is important.

I will just go back to how we got to this place. I want to commend the member for Banks, the shadow minister for communications, on this. He introduced a private member's bill back in November of last year, and it's now up for its first anniversary. I am very glad to see that the government, including the communications minister, have after 12 months decided to now come on board with a policy and legislation that initially originated from the Liberal Party and particularly from the shadow minister for communications, the member for Banks. While we are there, the other members on my side who have been instrumental in getting the legislation to the place where it is today are the member for Flinders and the member for Fisher—both of whom have been tireless advocates in this place for reducing the harm of social media on our children. I thank all of those members.

I have been inundated by emails from my electorate about this issue. Parents are crying out for assistance with this. Most times in your life when things go really pear-shaped, you can usually trace it back to when you haven't gone with your instinct, and parents have the correct instinct on this. They know that their kids are seeing things on social media and are being subject to bullying and subject to various sights and other graphics that they do not want their children to see.

In the normal course, for example—back before social media and before the internet—very few children under the age of 18 were viewing pornography. There were a few. There always are. But it was very different to what is now available these days. I hate to think what my kids have seen on social media. I really do. That is not good. It is bad for both young boys and young girls. It is saying to young girls: 'You have to look this certain way and you have to perform this certain way.' It is similarly saying to young men: 'You have to perform this certain way, and by the way it is okay to treat girls in this way.' A lot of that is being circulated through social media.

One of the other issues that I know a lot of us have grappled with is about the protection of privacy. It is very pleasing to see that the government has agreed to amend the legislation to include a clear provision stating that a person cannot be compelled to provide digital ID or other personal identity documents, such as passports. I know this was a big issue for some of my coalition members, particularly in the other place. It also prohibits platforms from using information collected for age-assurance purposes for any other purpose unless explicitly agreed to by the individual. What this means is that, once information has been used for age assurance, it must be destroyed unless the individual agrees to it being retained. I am quite comfortable that those privacy amendments do provide adequate privacy and address the concerns that have been raised by some of my colleagues here and also in the other place.

To conclude, this is good legislation. This is legislation that has been well thought through. Again, I thank the government for coming on board with the initiative that was originally proposed by the member for Banks. I commend the bill to the House for all of the reasons I have outlined.

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