Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to 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.

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is exactly what many have been calling for. I therefore encourage the government to focus on the duty-of-care legislation rather than rushing this blunt bill, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. After all, there is a positive precedent for a duty-of-care approach, with the EU's digital safety act obliging companies to design and operate their platforms to ensure people aren't harmed. Likewise, the United Kingdom legislation prevents access to content that promotes eating disorders or suicide.

Here, I want to acknowledge the work of the member for Goldstein, who this week introduced her Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2024. In stark contrast to what we have in front of us, this alternative bill has been developed over a period of 18 months in consultation with experts, carers and young people. Importantly, the member for Goldstein's bill addresses the underlying issues relating to online harm. I therefore thank her for her work and urge the government to withdraw their bill and bring hers on for debate.

To proceed with the legislation as it currently stands sets us up for failure, as evidenced by the failure of bans in other jurisdictions, including France and Canada. Concerningly, a ban has the potential to create a false sense of security for parents and complacency for platforms, leaving children who circumvent it with no protection against harmful content. Even if a ban could be enforced, there is a real risk it would drive young people to less-regulated services where adults or regulators have less oversight.

The government has also indicated online gaming services would fall beyond the scope of this legislation, despite games displaying many of the features cited as the core problems with social media, such as addictive features and potentially harmful content on social feeds. I can't let that exclusion go unchallenged as I have personal experience with friends who have had their kids refuse to go to school because of their gaming addiction.

Beyond concerns around the potential impact of an age ban on access to useful information, some of my community have also raised concerns on the bill's implications for privacy. The age-assurance trial is set to examine methods from estimation and inference to full-blown identity verification. With the former, we risk false positives as systems approximate a potential user's age. With the latter, users may be required to upload personal ID documents that many will rightly feel uncomfortable sharing. Ultimately, the more rigorous the test, the greater the risk that the right to privacy will be infringed. This is something my community of North Sydney cares deeply about.

More than a decade ago the then Attorney-General, who also happens to be the current Attorney-General, instructed the Law Reform Commission to conduct an inquiry into serious invasions of privacy in the digital era. Since then, academics and independent bodies like the Law Council have continued to call for action, arguing there is an urgent need for reform to strengthen protections for citizens and align Australian law with law in Europe and parts of North America.

This government then conducted another Privacy Act review, with the report offering 116 recommendations tabled in February last year. In it's response, the government agreed fully to 38 proposals, agreed in principle to 68 and noted 10. According to the Attorney-General's website, 'The government is committed to introducing legislation to protect the personal information of Australians in 2024.' Yet we have not even seen a draft of the new legislation. Instead, we have this bill which does nothing to offer any greater protection to anyone including our children. Rather, this bill will likely require personal identification or biometric data from all Australians to be gathered by the platforms. So, like many in my community, I'm confused by the government's priorities.

Other concerns related to this bill include the sharing of data with third-party verification services, the creation of databases linking real identities to online accounts, requirements for platforms to track Australian user location and the creation of infrastructure content monitoring—not to mention the potential for commercial surveillance of Australians. With all of that said, I also think it's unacceptable that the government is using its concern for the potential harms of online content to ban social media for the under-16s but won't ban online gambling advertising, despite the overwhelming evidence of the good an advertising ban would do.

Rather than pursue the bill in front of us, I urge the government to focus on empowering young people to curate their feed and ensuring parents feel comfortable having conversations with their children about the use of these tools in their day-to-day lives. I also encourage them to force the platforms to give users the ability to reset their algorithms and ensure they are held to account for providing broader education on what is possible, because we can already restrict the time a young person spends on their devices, we can already restrict the type of content someone sees and we can already implement strategies that provide a trusted source with an oversight on how a young person is engaging online. As a 12-year-old told me confidently just last week, 'It's all in the settings, silly.'

Ultimately, while I agree we need to ensure our kids are safe, this bill simply doesn't do that. Rather, this bill offers a blunt instrument that fails to meaningfully address the real problems of social media or hold platforms accountable for making their services safe for young people. For this reason, I move the second reading amendment as circulated in my name:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the House declines to give the bill a second reading, and notes:

(1) the concerns raised by the mental health sector that a social media ban for children under 16 could:

(a) limit young people's access to important online mental health services and positive social connections;

(b) disincentivise platforms from offering child safety features for younger users that will inevitably circumvent the ban; and

(c) push younger users onto less regulated platforms; and

(2) that a one-day window for submissions to a Parliamentary committee inquiry is insufficient given the potential magnitude of these risks, and a robust inquiry process should instead take place".

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

(Quorum formed.)

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In a time when we are moving towards nanobots with recursive self-improvement, a time when AI has the capacity to bring a whole new dimension to how we analyse what happens, I believe—or at least I've always hoped—that there would be the wit and the capacity for multibillion-dollar companies and multibillionaires to incorporate that technology into how people speak to one another. This is not so much person to person; this is person to phantom. There is an evil, insidious nature to what happens online.

I know this is a contentious issue for many, but I have incredibly strong views about why we should have the protections in this bill, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, for the vulnerable, who are getting into this online environment as they come home from school. I'll be honest, if you have girls who are around about 14 years old, they haven't developed a sense of proper agency in what's happening around them. A person—not a person; an evil thing, a phantom—has the capacity to come into that young person's life and completely turn it upside down, playing with their personality, playing with their ego like a cat plays with a ball of string and destroying that person. They really can.

Many parents have lived through this incredibly evil and destructive experience. A person who's happy and fun-loving is taken to the edge of death. Whether it's an issue such as anorexia, we stand back and say, 'What can we do?' Would you allow them to play with firearms or to play with dynamite just because it was free? I really mean it. It's as dangerous as that. It is not dangerous for everybody, but it is for the vulnerable, the person who starts competing with this unknown entity and tries to justify their position and tries to get a form of self-worth against—we don't know what. Is it another person, either named or unnamed?

We've already seen the tragedy of a young lady from near Strathfield—I think she was from Santa Sabina—who committed suicide the other day. We've seen other young girls who've taken their own lives. We have a responsibility to do something about this. It might not be perfect, but we've got to do something. You can't just sit back and say, 'Oh, this is too hard.'

I have been on this case for years. People say, 'We need more time.' I've been pursuing this for years.

I remember going to the United States of America and seeing Senator Ted Cruz on one side and a Democrats senator from the state of Washington on the other. They're a lot more forward leaning than we are. I don't think you'd find that they're some sort of socialist cabal; they are a lot more forward leaning. I watched them with a sense of real encouragement and with a real sense of purpose as they absolutely eviscerated people from Facebook and from Instagram. They were basically saying, 'Either you fix this or we will take your licence off you.' We haven't even gone partway down the path that that invective has. We have got to clearly understand that these companies could have done something. It's not as if they haven't heard about this. They choose not to. That is the problem: they choose not to. They choose not to because they make an incredible amount of money from advertising while having this group of people as part of their cohort.

This is not the misinformation and disinformation bill. That one has been parked. It's gone into oblivion, and I have not heard an obituary raised by those in the Labor Party and the Greens, saying they're sad about the misinformation and disinformation bill being buried. It went without a whimper. It died a miserable death, and it was carted out. But there's a fundamental difference here. That bill was about your right, in passive observation, to assess information that is before you and make your mind up as to whether you believe it or not, as to whether you absorb it and as to whether it informs you or not. Even if it's on criminality, it can't inform you to murder someone. It can't inform you that there's some sort of differentiation in DNA amongst humankind.

That information does not talk back to you. You observe it, and then you make up your mind about it. When you read a paper, the newspaper does not talk back to you. When you watch television, the television does not talk back to you. You make your judgement about what you are seeing. But social media is entirely different. It talks back. It talks back, and it says the most vile, horrendous things to beautiful, young people, who, at that point in their life, are looking for self-affirmation, who are looking to see themselves amongst their peers and who get sucked into this vortex that destroys lives. And it really does.

This bill is supported by some media houses not because the media houses believe it's a winner but because mums and dads think it's a winner. It's mums and dads who want this dealt with, and we have a responsibility to do something about it. Is this bill the perfect solution? No. Nothing that goes through this chamber is a perfect solution. It's the best attempt. It's us trying to do what we can, but it's not perfect. The great thing about the parliament is that, if something's not perfect, we can fix it. It is not beyond our wit to say, 'Oh, well, if in the future changes need to be mad, we'll make them.' Hopefully, we'll make them in the same bipartisan way as we are doing this, because I don't believe for one second that people on either side, in the majority, believe that this is a tenable situation.

What we are attempting to do with this bill is find a way to start the process to alleviate the problem that we have before us. We have made vastly more contentious moves in the past. Obviously one that comes to mind was after Port Arthur, with the control of firearms. I acknowledge that the member for Solomon and I have had quite a bit to do with firearms. I don't think any of us would go back now and say, 'You've got to have semiautomatic weapons in your cupboard and take them out for a run in the park.' No-one believes in doing that. Yet at the time there was tremendous uproar, a massive uproar. I live on the land. I own rifles. But if someone said to me, 'I want a Kalashnikov,' I would say: 'Why? You don't!' 'I need an F88 Steyr.' 'No, you don't, not unless you want to join the Army. Then you could be issued one from the armoury and trot around with it and the full kit.' I believe in the future people will say, 'Why didn't you do that earlier?' It is something that is before us now. Before we go into the next year, where it will be the fog of the election, this is something we can deal with now.

I pleaded with the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison that we had to do something about this. It was one of the things I brought up continuously, saying, 'When are we going to do something about Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Bezos and their cohorts that are capitalising on the misery of so many families?' It's an amazing thing. People say, 'You just tell your kids to get off it.' If that was the case, there'd be no-one who smokes. You'd just say to them, 'Don't smoke.' But 10 per cent of people do, and I'd say that 99 per cent of that 10 per cent know it's no good for you, but they do it.

When you see a child on their tablet, they swipe right and swipe left and bang, bang, bang and their fingers move so quickly and they're all across it. You can see that interaction and it is the most amazing, scary thing from a very young age. Then they start Minecraft. When they wake up early in the morning, go to the side of your bed and take the charger off you, sneak off, get on your phone and do all those tricks—just wake you up slightly with a phone in front of you. You look at it: 'Facial recognition. Thank you.' Off they go, back on to it. They can actually download programs. That's starting at a very young age.

What's in the back of your mind? 'It's Minecraft; it's passive.' They're engaged with the thing, but it's the start of the process. In the end you say: 'I know it's coming, Instagram. I know it's coming, TikTok. I know it's coming where they'll engage in that swill.' There are some nice things, but there's that swill of those evil people looking for vulnerable people. They get a kick out of hurting people. They get an endorphin kick; it makes them feel good. They don't care. In fact, some of this total and utter filth hold it as a prize if they kill you. It's a win. It is the crime you can get away with. You're out there as 'Rooster123' or 'Prince Charming' engaging with Jane Smith, 13 years old and at the local high school. 'Jane, you're fat. Jane, you should lose some more weight. Jane, you're a loser. Jane, you should kill yourself. You're nothing but rubbish.' Is that mythical? Is that overstating it? No, it's not. That's how it works.

And then there's the terrifying outcome that so many families have felt when they finally find out what's going on and they're having to engage the psychologist or the psychiatrist to try and deprogram this insidious programming that has happened. To get to that point in your life where you say to another person, 'What are you doing to yourself?' You get to the point where they have no control over their life anymore. It has been rewired by this engagement with a multibillionaire's money-making machine that makes them one of the richest people in the world. Whilst they acquire that massive wealth, and sit there in their T-shirt and parade like some sort of quasi-god on the stage in front of the adoring fans, they don't have the capacity to quietly stand back and contextualise all the mechanisms and all the attributes of how they made that money. They don't say to themselves in a quieter moment: 'Under my principles, under the rules I live by in my life, under the things that guide my compass, is what I am doing right? Is this good? Is this right? Is this just? Have I created harm? Am I responsible for hurting someone?' The answer to that last question is, yes, you are. But they don't do anything about it. So we have to do what is second best. We have to make our best attempt. We have to try to do what is right. This bill is our best attempt to do what is right.

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. I'm a mum to three teenage children, and I know that parents across Mackellar find themselves in a similar predicament to me: trying to help our children navigate their childhood and teen years in the digital era—not an easy task. I'm also a member of a generation which is so pleased to have lived through its formative years without a screen, and without social media in particular. Social media encourages us to constantly compare ourselves to others and can serve up unsolicited, harmful content, neither of which are conducive to good mental health. It's difficult for everyone. Technology changes far more quickly than policy, academic analysis, legislation and governments do. It's hard for everyone to keep up, but federal governments are elected to do hard things, and this should be no different.

Before getting to the bill itself, I would like to commend the government for tackling this challenging but incredibly important topic in its first term, as the need is urgent. I think it's important to recognise that the intention here is to protect our children and young people from harm. This, of course, is commendable. Let's be clear: there are significant harms being dished up to our children every day as they scroll through social media. There is eating disorder content, violent pornography, the normalisation of misogyny, and gambling, alcohol and junk food promotions specifically targeted to them. A 2023 eSafety Commissioner report found that 75 per cent of all 16- to 18-year-olds surveyed in Australia had seen online pornography, and almost one-third of those had encountered it before the age of 13. It found that 60 per cent of young people were exposed to pornography on social media, often unintentionally, on popular sites such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat   . All the while, young peoples' online activity and data is being harvested by these large corporations, with thousands of labels being attached to them, and this data is sold to innumerable companies for the purpose of targeted advertising.

I recently conducted a social media survey in the electorate of Mackellar to get a feel for what people were thinking about this social media ban for those under the age of 16. It was split down the middle for and against, but basically everyone agreed on one thing: something must be done to protect young people online. However, many felt that the ban that we are debating today was too blunt an instrument, would not be effective and could be easily circumvented. Some argued that, rather than introducing a ban, other measures should be introduced to make the online environment safer. One constituent summed up this issue by writing:

Nice idea in principle—but would more likely ending up cutting off vulnerable youth from support services. Unfortunately, there are some mental health and medical resources that only exist on social media. The EU is considering legislation that would prohibit algorithms dictating your feed, instead having social media only give information from users you actively follow. This may be a better compromise.

I now seek to introduce the second reading amendment circulated in my name. This second reading amendment highlights the problems with this bill. They can be summarised quite easily. Firstly, there are no grandfathering provisions. It is entirely unclear how platforms will be required to manage the many millions of existing users who are now set to be excluded and deplatformed—those children under 16 who are already on the designated platforms, who have been on them for years and who will now, in theory, be required to step away from them.

Secondly, the legislation is far too vague in stipulating how social media platforms are to comply with their obligation to prevent under 16s from having an account, stating only that it will likely involve:

… some form of age assurance, as a means of identifying whether a prospective or existing account holder is an Australian child under the age of 16 years.

For what is supposed to be world-leading legislation, this doesn't seem adequate.

Thirdly, under-16s will still be able to watch videos on YouTube and see content on Facebook. The ban is only designed to stop them from creating an account. Without legislation in place that imposes a duty of care on social media platforms to ensure that harmful content cannot be shared, young people will still be at risk of harm whilst supposedly relaxing in their bedrooms.

I do acknowledge that work has commenced to create duty-of-care legislation to compel social media platforms to prevent harm from occurring on their sites. But, of course, as with all things political and legislative, there is no guarantee that this legislation will come to fruition for years, if at all. A case in point is the gambling advertising ban bill, which, despite being so urgent and necessary, has been kicked off into the long grass by the government this week as being all too hard and all too scary with the looming election.

In much more general terms, however, I remain concerned that this bill has the potential to actually negatively impact children, by severing their access to vital mental health resources and social supports, which are critical for the very large number of young people already experiencing mental health challenges. There are also significant privacy concerns. Population-wide age verification raises serious concerns about data security and privacy, affecting both minors and adults.

We also know that age bans trialled in 10 other countries have failed. I acknowledge that technology has moved on since many of these trials were conducted, but it is also inevitable that many children under 16 years old will be able to bypass the age restrictions, thereby finding themselves inhabiting unregulated, darker spaces that they would otherwise not have found themselves in. This may have a chilling effect on young people. They may find themselves in even more harmful spaces than they would otherwise have been in, were it not for the ban. Being on these platforms illegally may mean they don't seek the support and help they need because they're worried about the legal repercussions—that is, getting into trouble.

Fundamentally, though, the problem with simply evicting children from the platforms is that it absolves the social media companies of their responsibility to create safe, well-designed services for young users. Our laws should demand that platforms take reasonable steps to resolve issues of safety and addictive design while also offering better experiences for children. That's where the danger of the superficial appeal of this legislation becomes most clear. Basically, this legislation, which simply bans those under 16 from using social media, means that social media companies won't be compelled to address and solve the actual causes of harm on their platforms—both the algorithms that serve up harmful content to teenagers and the design principles which ensure addiction.

According to Daniel Angus, a professor of digital communication and director of the Queensland University of Technology's Digital Media Research Centre, there are several things that the government should be doing to better avert harms that I have listed. The first recommendation is to impose a duty of care on digital platforms. The government has announced they're looking into this, which is welcome news.

My crossbench colleague the member for Goldstein introduced a private members bill just this week which would establish a digital duty of care. I commend her for doing this. The member for Goldstein's contention, which many digital experts agree with, is that rather than age gating, we need safety by design. That means, instead of simply shutting kids out, we need to address and prevent the harm being caused in the first place. This is especially important when the government is far from clear on how age gating will work.

This leads to the second recommendation from Daniel Angus, which is to enact regulations which will require platforms to give people more control over what content they see. Users should be able to change, reset or turn off their personal algorithm. The third recommendation is to create a children's online privacy code to better protect children's information online. This could be administered by the Children's Commissioner or the eSafety Commissioner or both.

These issues were comprehensively canvassed by a group of over 140 Australian and international experts who wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister last month. The view of that group is that an age based ban on accessing social media is too blunt an instrument to address the risks effectively.

I understand that this bill has been referred to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. In my short time here, I've always found Senate inquiries, which provide the opportunity for further expert scrutiny, inevitably result in improved legislation and outcomes. I particularly hope that the committee is actively seeking input from the children this bill seeks to regulate. The experts are telling us that children want safe online environments in which to socialise and be entertained. I look forward to reading the committee's report, which is actually due out today, and I will carefully review their recommendations as well as the input from my community of Mackellar, as ever, in making my final decision about whether to support this bill.

I move:

That all words after "House" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"does not decline to give the bill a second reading and notes:

(1) the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society tabled its final report on 18 November 2024 and carefully considered, but did not recommend, an age ban on social media;

(2) the Australian Human Rights Commission has serious reservations about the ban;

(3) in October 2024, over 140 Australian and international experts wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister and State and Territory leaders explaining their view that an age-based ban on accessing social media is too blunt an instrument to address the risks effectively;

(4) an aged-based social media ban could have unintended consequences including increased isolation and children being pushed to unregulated and dangerous platforms; and

(5) the imposition of a 'duty of care' on digital platforms is more likely to reduce online harm for all users regardless of age and should be implemented as a matter of urgency".

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for North Sydney moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The honourable member for Mackellar has now moved an amendment to that amendment, that all words after 'House' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Mackellar to the amendment moved by the honourable member for North Sydney be agreed to.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill seeks to provide to protection for children under 16 years of age from the harms associated with social media. It does this by requiring social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children under 16 from opening and maintaining social media accounts. In principle I do support this bill.

The ubiquitous use of social media apps among teenagers and children has created an environment that no other generation has had to encounter. We know that we—and that includes every living person—now live through our phones, our tablets and the news they provide, don't we? There's the envious review of a friend's photos from an overseas trip or the quick text chat with a friend or acquaintance. Sadly, this easy access has also robbed us of more personal and meaningful communication—the stuff we once enjoyed. One only has to look around in a restaurant to see couples of all ages heads down in their phones, scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, at the expense of their dinner companions. The thing that I've seen too often in my community and in other places around Australia is mum or dad sitting in the park on their phone while their children are on the equipment.

As a society, we're losing the ability to communicate. As for the young, many are missing out on the opportunity to develop the very communication skills that are so necessary for social, physical and mental wellbeing. It is ironic that social media, the very tools that enable us to communicate more easily with others, and other technological advancement before it, has in many respects, I think, had the opposite effect. Not too long ago, those aged 64 and older had the highest reported rates of loneliness and feelings of isolation. Social media opened up the world for older people to communicate directly with friends and family at their whim. However, the loneliest cohort now is the 16- to 24-year-olds, a complete inverse of historical loneliness records.

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, HILDA, which collects data on personal wellbeing, labour market dynamics and family life, provides an important insight into the lives of 17,000 Australians over the course of their lifetime. The HILDA Survey found that, between 2011 and 2021, the rate of psychological stress among 15- to 25-year-olds increased by 120 per cent. The Australian Psychological Society advises that psychologists report that teenagers are determining their self-worth on the number of likes they receive and are left feeling rejected if they don't receive instant approvals for their posts. In a recent media statement, the society stated that more than four in 10 Australian teens now suffer mental health distress, with experts drawing a link in the rise of cases with the use of social media.

The rate of hospitalisation for intentional self-harm surged to 70 per cent in young women aged 15 to 19 between 2008-2009 and 2021-2022. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued that digital platforms were not toxic in their original formulation, but that everything changed at the beginning of 2009 when Facebook added the 'like' button and later the 'share' button. The adoption of social media and the introduction of engagement tools such as 'like' and 'share' functions demonstrates a disturbing correlation. It is a correlation which appears to specifically affect the younger generation.

But, as I asked in my speech on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024, is legislation always the best form of action? If we are going to legislate, I think it's really important that we don't rush it. While acknowledging the negative aspects of social media and its indiscriminate effect on the young, there are many positive aspects. Social media provides opportunities for young people to digitally socialise and find people with shared interests. Importantly, it has become a useful communication tool among peers and parents alike.

There is a concern that removing under-16s from social media may have the adverse effect of further isolating a generation. Worse, it may drive children to unregulated web channels and social media services. This was raised in several submissions to the bill. Unregulated platforms offer minimal or no safeguards and pose greater risks from bad actors. If we think children won't find a workaround, we are kidding ourselves. They are, after all, digital natives, and, really, none of us in this room could argue that we are digital natives.

The merits of protecting our children are not up for debate; protecting them is a must. What is up for debate is how we achieve this, and I think we need to do this very carefully. Rushing legislation has been demonstrated time and time again to be a futile exercise; in fact, you could even say it is a dangerous exercise. We know from past experience that good legislation, particularly on major reforms such as this, requires extensive consultation and sufficient time for due diligence by members. Yet here we are with a bill on which the government gave a mere 24 hours to the public for feedback—24 hours!

This is the antithesis of good legislative practice, and I think that is where my real concerns sit. This feels so incredibly rushed for legislation that's not really supposed to be in operation for more than a year, perhaps two. It is a bill that requires age verification to be undertaken by social media platforms but is silent on how this occurs. We're told these details will be worked out later. I can't recall a single piece of legislation being passed where the details of operation were not known.

My concerns reflect those of many in my community. Yes, parents want a safer digital environment, but they're also adverse to tech giants having even greater access to personal data than they already have. The suggestion that these companies will only hold data for 24 hours provides no comfort, nor does the thought that these companies are mining our social media accounts to guess what age we are. These intrusions are deeply problematic and simply do not address the underlying issues; they just delay the inevitable.

The statistics on mental health deterioration, psychological distress and self-harm don't magically stop at 16. This bill doesn't necessarily make social media safer. It simply delays the danger until a young person turns 16. Good policy identifies a problem and, where appropriate, identifies a legislative fix. This bill suggests children are the problem and delaying their access is the fix, and that just can't be so. It does nothing to protect children 16 years and over, and, in doing nothing, it actually creates data risks that were previously not there. We know in the business world that data is gold, and it appears we're going to be gifting it to the social media monoliths by the pallet load.

I've circulated amendments, which I'll speak to later, to provide necessary personal identification protections to the millions of social media users that will potentially require age verification if this bill passes. I'm pleased to hear that apparently the government will be putting forward amendments in the Senate that pretty much mirror the amendments that I am putting to this House. I'm not sure why we couldn't support it in this House and somehow try and improve this bill that's going to inevitably pass in this House before it gets to the other place.

I, like every other Australian and every other parent, want to protect children—our children, our nation's children—from the harms caused by social media. However, I am very much concerned about not only the privacy aspect but also that this legislation is very rushed, is insufficiently consulted on, fails to address human rights concerns and, consequently, perhaps may not achieve the desired outcome. I just fail to understand why we are in such a hurry to do this in the last days of this year's parliamentary term. Why could we not have seen this bill months ago? Why can we not come back and look at this next year if it's not actually going to be in operation for a very long time? Since the minimum-age obligation will not be activated for at least 12 months, there really is no justification in rushing through this bill. I think it's just here to serve a political imperative rather than a safety imperative.

So, at this point, I'm very vexed on how I should vote on this bill—I really am. It's a flawed bill. The principle is great. I understand the principle. My community understands the principle, but this legislation appears to be incredibly flawed.

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

The question of an increase in the age threshold for the creation of social media accounts from 13 to 16 has been brought into political consideration over recent months because of concerns regarding the impact of social media on the mental health and wellbeing of Australian children.

The advent of social media has fundamentally transformed how humans spend their time and communicate. The repercussions of the changes are profound. Accumulating research has linked the amount of time children spend online and excessive and addictive use of digital media with adverse physical, psychological, social and neurological consequences. Researchers acknowledge a link between mental health disorders and social media usage. But it is important to note that relationship does not confirm causation. The thesis of parents groups and a recent pretty strong campaign by the Murdoch press is that increasing the age of those allowed on social media from 13 to 16 years would protect vulnerable young people from the dangers of social media.

It is true that if age verification could be comprehensively and effectively enforced, children and young people would be better protected from risks like cyberbullying and online predators. Limiting social media access might increase time for children to make other more healthy lifestyle choices, like exercising or socialising in person with others, and that could improve their mental health, sleep and academic performance. Restricting access to the digital world might empower parents and guardians to better guide their children's online activities. A complete ban, were that possible, might also help with online privacy concerns. Social media platforms collect vast amounts of personal data from users. Children and adolescents simply don't simply understand how their data is collected, used and monetised. Banning access for younger users might mitigate privacy violations and limit the exploitation of personal data by large technology companies. Each of those concerns does carry some truth.

We do need to address the harms caused by social media platforms. However, the overwhelming weight of expert evidence in this area is against this government's simplistic proposal of a blanket ban for young people aged less than 16. This country has a confusing array of laws around young people. You can be criminally responsible at 10, you can join the Labor Party at 14, you can join the Liberal Party at 16, you can work full-time from 16 and you can vote at 18. The fact is that digital media are vital for young peoples' civic, social and cultural participation. This is a point which is often stressed in qualitative research involving young people. How can we tell growing adults that they need to hold off becoming fully-fledged citizens and contributing members of society until they are 16?

Young people have a right to freedom of expression and access to information. They also have an implied right to political communication, which has been flagged by some tech platforms as a possible basis for legal challenges to this legislation. Social media is a vital information source and a means of expression for many members of the LGBTQIA+ community, for Indigenous Australians, for young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, for children who live in isolated areas, and for children and young people with a disability. This bill would block young people from the channels and the groups that are their public spaces, which are the forum for their everyday communication with their people.

Young people access their news via social media. They know legacy media doesn't reflect their interests. Legacy media makes little effort to engage with them and it doesn't afford them the opportunity to communicate with each other in the way that they want to—IRL. The only exception of which I am aware to that rule in this country is that of 6 News, the streaming channel founded in 2019 by Kooyong resident Leo Puglisi. Leo has employed a number of young Australian journalists, some as young as 13, in growing the only news and current affairs channel which presents the perspectives of people their own age. Young people conduct their businesses via social media. They use it to engage with other platforms' digital services, products, apps and sites—for example, YouTube compilation videos of TikTok content, sharing a story on Instagram which then goes to Facebook and to X.

It is not easy to disentangle social media from other platforms. This is most obvious with the Chinese platform Weibo, which is integrated as a matter of course with multiple functions like posting, group chats and a digital wallet. Australians, young people, know what they don't want to experience online. They don't want to experience unwanted content or contact, or unwanted surveillance and use of their data. But they tell us they would like to see better guidelines and boundaries and to understand the acceptable use of online spaces. They want better education and training on online safety, so that they can identify, recognise and thoroughly understand potential harms. Young people have told us that, instead of reforming age-verification laws, protection should be improved, with stronger technology such as digital passwords and secure apps. They want improved monitoring and swift action, and they want accountability regarding online safety practices, rather than reversing the onus and placing it purely on the user—a user who is physically and neurologically immature.

The advice of academics and other experts has been largely ignored or misinterpreted in the framing of this legislation. The bill even misrepresents the literature it cites about developmental ages and risks. It has dismissed the literally hundreds of Australian and international experts who have raised serious concerns regarding lack of benefit and potential harm resulting from the bill. It ignores the more than hundred submissions to the ridiculously, inappropriately brief, tick-a-box Senate inquiry into the bill which was held earlier this week.

The legislation is going to rely on effective age assurance or verification processes being adopted. That means that all Australians will be required to prove their identity to access social media. Exactly how that is going to happen is completely unclear. The minister has claimed that we won't be compelled to hand over our personal identification, but I note that that statement is at odds with the explanatory memorandum for the bill.

The government has committed $6.5 million to a study of new age-verification technology. That study is due to report in 2025. But now the government proposes to give responsibility for the process over to the digital platforms. Even Google and Meta say that they think it would be better to wait for the result of the review. Age verification is rife with privacy and digital-security risks, as well as critical effectiveness and implementation issues. It is not a cure-all safeguard for children and for their data protection.

Children's location data is extremely sensitive. There is significant potential for more, not less, data harvesting from children, if we hand over to the platforms the power to verify and assure children's age. Meta has already told us that it will undertake age assurance using facial recognition, digital ID and other forms of software.

The international benchmark for digital governance, the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, clearly defines individuals as the owners of their data. It states that consent for data use has to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.

In Australia, the lack of transparency of international digital platforms regarding how they collect, share and use data leaves individuals exposed to algorithms which are based on their online habits. Protections for children are dependent on different rules on different platforms.

There is a perception that regulating the collection and use of data collected by digital platforms is complex, but this is not the case. Digital platforms are predicated on rules and processes, and they can be amended accordingly. Mind you, those rules can be evaded by those children who lie about their age online and are then targeted with content for older age groups. Experience overseas, and previous experience in this country, suggests that a blanket ban will last about five minutes. Ask Stephen Conroy. Technological workarounds, such as VPNs, and false age declarations will inevitably undermine the effectiveness of this ban. The government has admitted that already.

As the Tech Council of Australia has said, this bill will only add to the existing perceptions internationally that the Australian technology sector operates in an uncertain regulatory environment which can be subjected to rapid legislative change without due consideration. This legislation does not inspire confidence in this government.

Regardless of how it's done, a ban is not going to address the root causes of online risks, and it's not going to make platforms safer for everyone. Age-gating will not make unsafe products safe. Bans could well create more risk for those children who still use those platforms, because they will remove the incentives to ensure robust child-safety features for young users who evade the age-assurance measures. Bans will not improve those products that children will still be allowed to use. What is the problem here? Is it the fact we are letting billion-dollar companies market unsafe digital products in Australia, or is it the fact that some of the Australians using those products are children and teenagers?

There are much less restrictive alternatives available which could achieve the aim of protecting children and young people from online harms. An appropriate starting point to better protect child rights online would be implementation of the recommendations of the Privacy Act review and the Online Safety Act review. Both of these looked to tackle concerns linked to the digital environment pragmatically rather than prohibitively.

To that end, yesterday I supported the member for Goldstein's private member's bill for a digital duty of care. Her proposal to amend the Online Safety Act to impose an overarching standard of care for large providers would mandate risk assessments and risk mitigation plans, mandatory transparency reporting, and stringent enforcement mechanisms. It would require the platforms to take reasonable steps to make their products safe for children and young people. It would improve online safety for everybody. Other measures to improve online safety could include regulating to limit notifications, autoplay, low default privacy settings, weak age gating for adult products, and the infinite scroll feature which is designed to promote user engagement.

We need to also help children and young people better navigate online spaces by ensuring that the national curriculum includes a specific focus on digital literacy and online safety. Young people should be taught to think critically about what they see online and how they engage with social media. Parents and teachers also need better tools and resources to help them provide appropriate guidance and support. This work will take time and effort—the sort of time and effort that the government has not put into this legislation. But that time and effort would be worthwhile.

We all know and acknowledge that social media carries significant risks for children and young people. As a parent, as a paediatrician and as a politician, I know that those risks need to be addressed by this government. We do have a duty of care: to make changes in this important area carefully and judiciously but with a mind always to the rights and the needs of young people.

In this last sitting week of 2024, with no apparent cause and no rational justification for their unseemly haste, both major political parties in Australia are rushing to ban social media for young people. Their proposals are broad in scope, but they are short on detail. They abdicate all responsibility for the program to digital providers. They are not evidence based. They risk being ineffectual, and they risk potentially significant unintended consequences. They will drive cynicism in young Australians, who will see that this government hasn't got the bottle to take on online gambling advertising but is happy to rush through this legislation without appropriate consultation or thought.

Systemic regulation would drive up safety and privacy standards on all platforms, for all children. This approach is supported by the experts—experts in mental health, digital literacy and child psychology. This approach will protect our children. Age assurance is rife with privacy and digital security risks. It's rife with critical effectiveness and implementation issues. It is not a cure-all safeguard for children and their data protection. It could well increase risk for young Australians in the digital space.

Something worth doing is worth doing properly, carefully, judiciously and in an evidence based way. We have a duty to protect the best interests of all Australians, but most particularly our young and our vulnerable. This bill will not do that, and for that reason I cannot commend this legislation to the House.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by highlighting what the coalition has negotiated when it comes to the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. It has negotiated some incredibly important amendments which we expect to see reflected as amendments in the Senate debate. These were important changes which all members in this House should note. In our view, they have significantly strengthened this planned piece of legislation.

The first area where we have improved this legislation is in relation to privacy, and I can't be clearer as to how important this is. There will be new provisions stating that people cannot be compelled to provide digital ID. That's worth repeating. People cannot be compelled to provide digital ID. They cannot be compelled to provide government-issued identity documents such as a driver's licence or a passport. Under this legislation, you cannot be compelled to provide a driver's licence or a passport, and you cannot be compelled to provide digital ID, full stop, period. That is what the legislation will say when it is amended in the Senate.

Secondly, following our discussions with the government, changes will be made so that the communications minister will be able to make rules specifying actions that social media platforms are not required to take in order to comply with the legislation. The minister can make sure that they can set rules that will dictate to the social media platforms the things they do not have to undertake. This means that these rules and the person who governs these rules will not be the eSafety Commissioner. It will be the minister. The minister can be held to account by the Australian people, and, if the minister doesn't do the right thing and doesn't instruct the social media platforms accordingly, then we have a way to deal with that, which is an election. If the minister cannot justify what they've done, then the minister obviously will be held to account by the Australian people.

These are incredibly important changes to an issue which is incredibly important. It's one that goes back a long way. It's not like we've come to this chamber today dealing with this issue for the first time. When I was education minister, now some six or seven years ago, Jonathan Haidt from the US, a well-known and well-regarded professor, came to this country, detailing the issues that he was already starting to see that social media was having on young people. He started talking about the harm that it was causing, in particular the mental health issues—the anxiety, depression, bullying and all sorts of other issues that were the impact social media was having on young people's minds. The statistics then were so staggering that it led me to push at an Education Ministers Meeting with all the state and territories for them to ban phones at schools. Sadly, it took many years after that for that to occur. But even then the data was so compelling that it became obvious that we had to start taking action to protect children.

We've gotten where we are today because of the evidence base that has been presented about the harm being caused. We've seen it in newspaper articles in the last five to six years or more, whether it be regarding the impact of bullying, youth suicide—young people, sadly, taking their lives—eating disorders or anxiety. Through all these things, we've seen that there is harm being caused. The question that we all have to answer is: why would you give young people under the age of 16 access to information and sites that we prevent them from having in the real world? Why would we allow them a mechanism where they can see child pornography at the age of 16 or below when you can't see that in the real world—when it's banned? Child pornography is obviously banned full stop—illegal. Pornography is only available to those over 18, yet we're providing the mechanism for those under 16 to see it.

Parents absolutely have a role to play, but parents also need help and some guidance from lawmakers—from us, a lot of whom are parents. We have to play our role to support parents. Parenting is critical in this. Parenting has the primary role, but we help parents by saying, 'The law backs you in saying that your child, if they are under 16, shouldn't get access to social media.' Let's not fool ourselves. The big social media companies can put in place the mechanisms to deal with this, and to deal with it in a way that doesn't mean you need to provide digital ID or government sanctioned ID. We have the tools to deal with this.

As with any law, what we also need to do is to assess its impact over time and to modify and change it over time—as we do with all laws. That is what this will enable us to do as well. We will be able to have committees look at it; have further advice given to us as legislators; and continue to take steps to keep children safe—to make sure that we're doing everything we can to stop the bullying and the eating disorders, and to basically make sure that young kids aren't getting access to gambling or pornography, which they shouldn't be getting access to.

Will it be perfect? No. Is any law perfect? No, it's not. But, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people's lives. It will make a huge difference to the lives of families and to parents in how they're parenting their children, because if they're able to say, 'The law is on our side,' then it will help them to enforce the guidance that they want to give their children.

While we're on the subject of the large social media platforms, I want to talk about the impact that they're having more broadly on society, particularly when it comes to how news is generated in this country. Last week we had the very, very sad news that the Hamilton Spectator, the Portland Observer and the Casterton News will be closing down. To give you a sense of the history that we are losing in western Victoria as a result of this, the Hamilton Spectator was first published in 1859. It is definitely one of the longest-running newspapers in this country. There are many reasons why it is closing, and my hope is that someone might still come along and purchase it, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Richard and Nola Beks for everything they've done to make sure that the newspapers, since their first time taking over the Hamilton Spectatorwhich was in 1985—have been the distinguished newspapers that they are.

As we all know in this place, newspapers sometimes give us as MPs a good, positive run. At other times, they'll ask serious questions about why we've voted this way or that way. But I have always found the Hamilton Spectator, the Casterton News and the Portland Observer have had absolute integrity in the way they've gone about their journalism. They've done the best they possibly can to make sure they've advocated on behalf of their local communities, and have ensured that those communities have a voice. I want to thank the Beks family, and can I take this opportunity to thank, in particular, Richard Beks, for his stewardship of these newspapers, as well as all the journalists that have worked for the newspapers over a long period of time.

I was in Casterton recently. They were hit by a huge hailstorm. Who was there? The local journalist, making sure that the reporting of what was happening was accurate and that the community was being heard. Thank you, Kristy. The Hamilton Spec has always done that on behalf of their community, as has the Portland Observer. I was in Portland recently with the head of Alcoa. There was wonderful reporting on what was happening out at the smelter—an incredibly important business for Portland and its future. In the same way, the Spec has done it year in, year out for all that time, dating back to 1859. Thank you to the Beks for what you have done. Thank you to all those journalists who have worked for those three newspapers over this long and distinguished period. It is a sad day for our community and, as I've said, my hope is that someone might step in and purchase them so that that community presence that those newspapers represent can continue.

Debate adjourned.

Leave granted for second reading debate to resume at a later hour.