Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026
Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (12:49): I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026, and I move the second reading amendment circulated in my name: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House: (1) recognises that the former Coalition Government delivered world-leading online safety reforms, including the enactment of the Online Safety Act 2021, which set an international benchmark for protecting Australians, and children in particular, online; (2) notes the Government's social media age restrictions were poorly designed, and badly implemented which has compromised the online safety of Australian children and failed parents, and this bill is an embarrassing admission the Government is failing; (3) expresses concern the Government's proposed digital duty of care remains ill-defined and uncertain in its scope and operation, and that the Government has failed to explain how it would work, what obligations it would impose, or how it would be enforced without creating unintended consequences; and (4) expresses further concern that much more needs to be done to protect children online, including by giving parents access to effective mobile device safety tools, and combating the addictive algorithms which fuel harmful 'doom scrolling' on social media feeds".
I do so with a simple observation. The Albanese Labor government has been forced back to the parliament to fix a law it told Australians it had already fixed. Let us be clear about what this announcement really is: doubling the maximum penalty to $99 million and legislating new information-gathering powers.
These are not the actions of a government that has got it right. They are the admissions of a government that got it wrong. The Albanese Labor government's social media ban is half baked, poorly designed, rushed and badly implemented, and every Australian parent who was promised that their children would be safer is today learning the truth—that this ban was built on very thin scaffolding indeed.
You don't just have to take my word for it. The eSafety Commissioner herself described this ban as a 'very blunt force approach', developed very quickly. She now says she was 'not keen on it' when it was first discussed.
She said it did not give her the 'potent powers' that she needed. When your own regulator tells you the tools don't work, there's a real problem, and that problem has a name: incompetence. The evidence is damning.
A landmark Australian study published just last week in the British Medical Journal found that 85 per cent of under-16s are still accessing social media—we know this; we see this out and about in our communities—and that ban was unlikely to improve adolescent mental health in the short term. The study concluded there had been limited implementation, incomplete compliance and substantial circumvention.
The eSafety Commissioner's own compliance update in March this year found that 70 per cent of children remain on these platforms. That is a verdict on the Albanese Labor government's signature child-safety policy. And, while children slip through the cracks, the minister flies around the world taking credit for a policy that this side of the House made possible.
Minister, the work that needed to be done was here at home—the hard work of design, of enforcement, of getting it right. That work was never done. Worse, the government continues to mislead Australians, boasting that more than five million accounts have been removed.
But we know a large proportion of those are Google accounts used for Gmail and other purposes that have nothing to do with social media accounts. Australians deserve honesty, not spin dressed up as success. The coalition will not be lectured by this government when it comes to protecting children online, because, when it comes to online safety, it is this side of the House that built the frameworks that Labor now leans on.
It was the coalition that established the eSafety Commissioner, the first dedicated online safety regulator of its kind anywhere in the world—although I have questioned the overuse of the eSafety Commissioner's powers. We did not follow other nations. We led them.
Australia became the global benchmark, and governments around the world looked to what we had built and sought to replicate it. It was the coalition, through the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Act, that first gave Australia a Children's eSafety Commissioner, with powers to have cyberbullying material taken down, protecting young Australians from the torment of online abuse.
It was the coalition that expanded that office in 2017 to protect all Australians, not just children, recognising that online harm does not stop at the age of 18. It was the coalition that delivered the landmark Online Safety Act 2021, the most comprehensive online safety regime in the country's history. We halved the time platforms have to remove harmful content, from 48 hours to 24, and built an adult cyberabuse scheme, strengthening protections against intimate images being shared without consent.
And the coalition put in place the basic online safety expectations, putting the onus squarely on the tech giants to make their platforms safe by design, not as an afterthought. It was the coalition that gave the eSafety Commissioner the power to order the removal of the very worst content—and I think everyone would agree: child sexual abuse material, pro-terror content, abhorrent violent material—no matter where in the world it is hosted.
That's a record. That's leadership. That is the hard, methodical work of governing by designing laws that actually function, which stands in stark contrast to what we have seen from the Albanese Labor government.
The coalition supported a minimum age for social media. We want to keep children safe, but supporting the goal was never the same as endorsing Labor's execution, and on execution the Albanese Labor government has failed. Labor inherited a world-leading framework and a world-first regulator, and it still managed to deliver a ban that 85 per cent of under-16s simply ignore.
They had every tool the coalition built at their disposal. They have now squandered the goodwill of this parliament through incompetence, haste and a minister out of her depth. So let this be said plainly: much more must be done for our children.
Parents must be given proper mobile device safety tools. We must confront the addictive algorithms that fuel doomscrolling and prey on young minds, and we must block the live streaming that enables the very horrors of child sexual abuse. The online safety of our children is not a press release, nor is it a photo opportunity; it is a solemn responsibility.
On this government's watch, that responsibility has been dropped. Australian parents deserve better, and Australian children deserve better. Until this government does the hard work it has so far avoided, the coalition will hold it to account every single day.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ): Is the amendment seconded? Mr Rebello: I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.