Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think we all want to see our children protected from harm online, but what's the real cost of a social media ban for children? Firstly, it's not clear to me how an age-specific ban could actually be enforced, short of requiring all Australians to prove their identity, and therefore their age, before using their social media accounts. How would it be done? The only reliable methods that are likely to work are those which require social media accounts to be linked to either a government certified ID, digital ID or biometric data. Immediately, we've gone from talking about a law protecting children under 16 from online harm to proposals potentially requiring all Australians to submit personal identification as a condition of using social media. This is how concerns over safety—in this case, children's safety—convince people to hand over their freedom, to hand over their personal information.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that a generation of young people are starting to unpick the lies of the corporate media online, does it? Well, of course it does! What a great way to ensure that young people only get a left-wing government message approved to them via their devices. Frankly, the words 'ban' and 'media' should never exist in a sentence together, and parents should always be in charge of what their children watch and what their children watch online.