Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How is the Albanese Labor government working to protect children from online harm?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for his question. This is all about giving children and giving parents peace of mind and giving them support because they are concerned about their young ones and the impact that social media is having on their lives, on their mental health, on their physical health and on their capacity to engage in real experiences with real people rather than live their lives virtually. I want young Australians to grow up playing outside with their friends on footy fields, netball courts, swimming pools, wherever they like. Today we saw again a celebration of great athletes when we welcomed home the great Paralympians, who can inspire people to get out and really participate.

Too often social media is not social at all. The internet, of course, connects us in ways that previous generations could never have imagined. But it has also created new harms which we as a government must address and which governments around the world are trying to address. The solutions aren't simple. That is why we need to have trials and make sure that we get these things right.

Regulating technology is difficult. We are entering a new frontier but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. We must. This is a complex problem. Young people can find ways to get around rules. Because the occasional young person might get access to alcohol doesn't mean we say we won't worry about restricting alcohol to under-18s; we will just let it all rip. We actually regulate and we organise. As a society we make decisions about protecting people and that is what this is about.

We have a comprehensive agenda for online safety that we've been implementing since the day we were elected: backing the eSafety Commissioner and quadrupling its funding; exploring a duty of care in the Online Safety Act review; tackling kids' access to pornography through new mandatory industry codes, passing legislation to ban the creation and distribution of deepfake pornography; establishing the Joint Select Committee on Social Media to hold platforms to account; and funding the age assurance trial in this year's budget in May. We are acting with purpose to get this right, getting on with the job of protecting Australian citizens. In particular, our focus here is protecting our youngest Australians during that period of life where their brain is developing, where they are developing as human beings and interacting with each other as well. It is a responsibility that we have and it is one we are taking seriously.