Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, which addresses a serious concern in our communities, and I thank the many constituents who have contacted me about this bill. As the member for Mallee and as the shadow minister for regional health, I want to work through this debate, on a principled basis, as to the concerns parents have raised about social media and their authority to determine what their children do, and the concerns constituents have raised about digital security.

When I was elected as the member for Mallee in 2019, I never imagined that, five years later, we would be fighting to save our children's childhoods. As a mother and grandmother, I see how pervasive devices and electronic entertainment have become in children's lives. I was out for one of my daughters' birthdays earlier this year and saw a woman with her young children and her own mother, with both children's eyes glued to two large iPads. Just metres away, other children played on large indoor playground equipment.

We cannot simply stand by and watch our children's childhoods being stolen. Imaginative play, physical activity and fitness are slipping away. As I said at a consumer health forum this morning, regional Australians have poorer health indicators relative to the rest of our population when it comes to their weight and exercise. Children are coping with boredom by using a digital device. We in the older generation must take responsibility for what our own device-behaviour models around our children and grandchildren and give those children the love, time and attention they crave and deserve.

In Canberra recently we debated the influence of tech giants in Australians' lives and the impact that negativity on social media is having, particularly on children. The cyberbullying, body-image messaging and lurid pictures are bad enough, let alone the psychological disorders that the tech platforms fail to address—or even promote, through their algorithms.

For centuries in Australia, our children's values have been formed by mum and dad and grandparents, the extended family and the community. Now, in the parenting hierarchy, some governments want to control what people believe and think, and they are positioning themselves at the top of that ladder, and, whether we intended it or not, tech giants—like Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Snapchat and Apple—are fast pushing family and community values into oblivion. If government and tech giants are the new gatekeepers of values, we have a volatile and destructive mix.

I want to focus—as I did as a member of the parliamentary committee I was on in 2019-20—on Protecting the age of innocence, the title of our February 2020 report. We recommended then age verification for online wagering and online pornography. As the tech giants design their apps and devices to be addictive, the age verification debate has broadened to social media.

I digress for a moment to highlight the comments I made earlier this year about the systemic, multinational tax-avoidance of the tech giants. It is hard to bend an ear to their concerns, given the harms they bring to our society and given the way they don't pay their fair share in this country.

The Leader of the Opposition committed, in his budget reply speech, that the coalition would, within 100 days of taking office, require an age limit of 16 for social media and other potentially harmful platforms. Today, we are debating how we implement that initiative, after the government accepted the coalition's position. The coalition tried to legislate for an age verification trial in November, but the Albanese government opposed it and are still months away from any real action.

The coalition has been at the forefront of advocating for this crucial change, because we believe it is essential for the safety, health and wellbeing of our children. There is growing evidence that social media is having a serious negative impact on the mental health of young Australians. Over the past decade, mental health conditions among children, especially girls, have significantly increased, and social media is a key contributor to this distress.

On these platforms, children are exposed to unfiltered content from anyone, anywhere—often, anonymously. Much of this material is inappropriate and unhealthy for young audiences and their developing brains. Children frequently encounter bullying, harassment and other harmful behaviours. Additionally, these platforms are designed to fuel addiction, and we don't yet fully understand how the algorithms employed by social media companies work, and how, or by whom, they can be influenced. As a society, we would never have intentionally allowed our children to be exposed to such dangers, yet this is happening every day on social media. This is unacceptable. Again, as shadow assistant minister for regional health, I want to pick up on a comment an Optometry Australia representative made to me about the way devices are affecting children's eyesight, with a distinct increase in myopia attributed to devices. Banning social media access for children under 16 won't fix that directly, but indirectly removing one of the reasons to be on the devices will certainly help.

I come now to a very important subject. There is arguably no more important subject in public policy. That is respecting and preserving parental authority. Where we need to draw a distinction is between permanently undermining parental rights and giving effect to the collective will of parents through this parliament to help protect our children and their children. That line of distinction is less a line and more of a smudge, a grey area, which is why this debate is so important. As a member of the National Party, I champion individual responsibility and therefore understand concerns about government interfering in parental decision-making. But it is clear to me that this is a public health issue, where nuanced policy-making is required to protect children from all walks of life, including those whose parents are not aware of, are not concerned about or don't have the digital skills or capacity to control their child's use of social media themselves. Let me be clear: I respect and support parents' wishes to have primacy in determining what they allow their children to do. I also respect the democratic view of parents represented in this place to show the parliament has their back.

A good example is where state governments have helped parents of teenagers in another way: restricting their rights for a limited and vulnerable time in the driver's seat. States control the hours that provisional drivers licence holders, or P-platers, can drive, how many people can be in their car and even in some cases the power of the engines those young people can drive. Too many parents have lost a child. Too many communities, many of them regional communities, have endured the heartache of a tragedy from young people not being ready to drive responsibly. The tragedy is not the same, but it's equally tragic when it comes to young lives lost to the negative impacts of social media. Just as P-plater restrictions save lives, this reform will save lives as well. P-plater restrictions help parents who in some cases struggle to control or know what their children's behaviours are. A control on when and how children under 16 can use social media helps parents who can have greater difficulty exercising their authority over teenagers. Similarly, as the shadow minister said earlier in this debate, state governments have imposed mobile phone bans in schools to keep schoolchildren focused on their schooling. The dominant feedback from teachers, as I understand it, has been overwhelmingly positive about the impact these bans have had in the classroom and around the school grounds.

The coalition strongly believes that protecting online privacy is fundamental to the successful delivery of this ban. That is why we opposed the Albanese government's digital ID laws earlier this year, citing concerns over privacy implications. It is crucial that any social media regulations safeguard the privacy of Australians. Some in the community have tried to politicise this issue and whip up hysteria about it. In reality, that's not what this legislation is about. While this bill is not perfect, it's another tool to support parents in their challenging role. We should not conflate this with digital ID. In her second reading of this bill, the Minister for Communications, the Hon. Michelle Rowland, said, 'The bill makes it explicit that platforms must not use information and data collected for age assurance purposes for any other purpose unless the individual has provided their consent.' I would say, 'Watch what you tick.' Also, she says that, once the information has been used for age assurance or any other agreed purpose, it must be destroyed by the platform or any third party contracted by the platform. The minister told question time on Monday:

… we have made clear the digital ID framework is not in scope and would not be used for age assurance.

As an opposition and prospectively the next government, we will hold the minister accountable to that pledge.

I highlight again that earlier this year the coalition opposed the government's half-baked Digital ID Bill. The key principle here is protecting children from harm while ensuring privacy is protected. That said, I am critical of this government for limiting consultation on this legislation so tightly and preventing adequate community input and debate in the Senate. Only 24 hours were provided for public submissions on this bill, and a turnaround time of three business days was imposed on the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee to report on this bill. There were a mere three hours of public hearings held yesterday. These impediments to parliamentary process are unnecessary and unhelpful in finding the right balance between health and safety, supporting parents in their authority and privacy.

Labor have been driving with the handbrake on when it comes to this bill, taking their sweet time to get moving and take steps towards tangible action. Now we are in the final sitting week of the year, the brake has suddenly been taken off and the pedal is flat to the floor and Labor is racing to get this legislation to the finish line with limited due process. The inevitable result will be unintentional consequences and that improvements will need to be made by the next government. I must reiterate that this is Labor's bill. The coalition acknowledges the imperfections in this bill but remains keen to see parents provided with support to protect their children from the harms of social media.

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