DOCUMENTS

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (15:03): I move: That the Senate take note of the explanation. As soon as I saw Minister Farrell's name on the red next to this in attendance, I knew I was going to get some hard facts. Before I get into the minister's explanation, I'd like to offer the chamber a bit of background to this order for the production of documents.

On 28 July, I moved that the Minister representing the Minister for Communications produce documents held by the minister in relation to the social media ban. That motion was agreed to without a division, and may I note that the minister just referred to it as a 'social media delay' instead of a ban. Maybe it's just, optically, they don't want to call it a ban, but that is what it is.

The due date for the order came and went, and, 12 days after the documents were due, the government coughed up what is now a very familiar sight to most of us in this place: a collection of documents massacred by black texta. The minister suggested that such extensive redaction was necessary to protect the government's ability to obtain relevant commercial information.

On 26 August, the Senate ordered the minister to table a detailed justification for the public interest immunity claim made for this order by 1 September. Now, 1 September came and went, and the Senate ordered on 2 September that, in the absence of an explanation, the minister must produce the documents without redaction. On 4 September, the minister then tabled a further letter which said that no further information on the PII claim was available.

The government's behaviour is both opaque and lazy. Not only will they not release the documents without redaction; they had to be dragged into the Senate chamber to explain why. These documents deal with the forthcoming social media ban—and it's a ban, b-a-n.

There are 42 days until the ban takes effect. If there's one thing I can say about the government's approach, it's that it's been consistently inconsistent. Since the ban was legislated, YouTube has been included, then excluded, then excluded for a different reason and then included again.

Even the Prime Minister has admitted: We don't argue that its implementation will be perfect … This is not a policy to improve the mental health of young Australians out there; it is a policy designed to prey on the fears of parents and offer a perceived solution. Sometimes in this place the politics comes first and the policy comes later, but in this case I think the policy never arrived.

At estimates earlier this month, the eSafety Commissioner gave evidence that she wasn't aware of a single piece of legislation in the communications portfolio that was rushed through parliament as fast as this ban nor any other piece of legislation in any portfolio that was subject to such a short inquiry with just a 24-hour opening for submissions. To some, this issue may seem abstract.

Who cares about how long an inquiry was? Let's have a look at a concrete example of the future under the ban. A few weeks ago, Discord, a very popular online communications service, was hacked.

More than 70,000 people had pictures of identifying documents, like drivers licences, leaked into a massive, huge data breach. If you think that breaches like that aren't going to become commonplace in Australia, I hope you like waiting in line to get your licence replaced. This policy will push young people to more harmful platforms.

It will harm privacy. It will lead to more data breaches, and it just won't work. I'll be taking further action in this area on Monday, and I'll continue to hold this government to account on this issue in the lead-up to 10 December and beyond.