David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Minister, for the explanation. I am in no way suggesting that people's views be curtailed on social media, but there is a huge amount of advertising on Meta, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I haven't seen the research that you cite, but it makes no sense to me to include all of these other advertising mediums and then not to include social media. I take your point on not wanting to be ahead and waiting for JSCEM, but, if JSCEM says social media should be included in the blackout period and that is before the referendum, will the government include that? I don't see why we should disadvantage the referendum and risk having advertising that really can't be scrutinised given that a lot of the ads on social media are dark ads. They're not visible to everyone. They're being served to people individually, and there is not a lot of transparency, but we know that political advertising on social media is well regulated, so it is fairly simple for the social media companies to simply not allow political ads in those last few days.