QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (15:04): I thank the member for Dunkley for her question and for her advocacy for her powerful local organisation SmackTalk. The Albanese government is taking world-leading action to protect Australians from online harm, especially children and young people, who are the most vulnerable. Our social media minimum age law has so far seen the accounts of five million under-16s removed, deactivated or restricted.
We are already seeing the green shoots of what the world looks like for young people without the pervasive and persistent pull of social media. They are playing more sport, they are reading more books and they are reconnecting with their friends and their families in real life. eSafety is actively investigating potential noncompliance by Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.
If eSafety finds these platforms have systemically failed to uphold their legal obligations, I expect the eSafety Commissioner to throw the book at them in court, because the Albanese government is on the side of parents and kids, not of platforms. That is why we quadrupled funding to our independent regulator and why we are introducing a digital duty of care.
The Albanese government's digital duty of care will change the foundation of Australia's online safety laws. It will recognise that big tech have the technology, have the resources and have the responsibility to manage harms before they occur, rather than solely relying on individuals to report harmful material post exposure, and they will have to ensure the safety of the features they choose to adopt, like AI and like algorithms.
The digital duty of care will empower eSafety to react twice as quickly to cyberabuse and to compel more transparency from tech companies, to keep Australians safe online. We have a long-term view and a strategy to ensure that safety is built into online products and is not an afterthought. As Catherine West wrote in the Australian, all parliamentarians across every party should support the digital duty of care with 'the same multipartisan resolve that delivered Australia's landmark social media ban'.
She wrote: This is not a political question. It is not an issue that should be bargained or traded or compromised. It is a question about what kind of society we are.
The Albanese government have got the backs of Australian families against big tech, and we will not back down.