Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026

Ms CHANEY (Curtin) (13:08): I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. Sometimes I reflect on the promise of the internet, of social media and of our digital platforms. We thought that they would be a place to connect, to cross oceans and skies, to stay in touch with family and loved ones despite the distance.

We thought they would give everyone the opportunity to have their say. Suddenly, all you needed to have your voice heard was a phone and an internet connection, and we thought that that would contribute to a flourishing democracy. We thought that they'd be spaces for children to learn and for people to find support and friendships.

We thought they'd spark incredible productivity and growth. Imagine sitting down with someone from the 1970s or 1980s and telling them this: within 50 years, nearly everyone on earth will carry a device in their pocket that gives them instant access to the sum of human knowledge—every book, every paper, every fact, available in seconds. They would have assumed the obvious consequence: productivity would soar.

But it hasn't. Productivity has declined, and almost all of the promises of our online spaces have fallen flat. It is not necessarily because the potential wasn't there but because the downsides of our online spaces have well and truly trumped the positives.

Our online spaces are now vectors for incredibly harmful material: child sexual abuse material, suicidal content, aggressive bullying, radicalisation and racism. But the harms are actually deeper than this. Social media is now home to a constant negativity and enshittification that wears people down—constant misinformation, constant AI slop, constant misogynistic and racist comments, constant outrage and polarisation.

So many of the adults and children I speak to don't like social media. They're sick of algorithms that produce outrage and negativity, but they feel obliged to use it. They feel obliged to use it because we've welcomed these technologies into our lives without thinking about the harms they would cause, and now it is too late.

Our lives are so entwined with social media and digital platforms that it's impossible to undo, and it makes unpicking the harms really difficult—not to mention that the big tech companies are now as powerful as many nation-states. In this context, I strongly commend the Australian government's world-leading work in regulating online spaces. The under-16 social media ban is world leading.

It required courage to implement, and I congratulate the government for this courage. It's great to see so many countries overseas now following in our footsteps, and I'm glad to see we're not stopping there. The government's commitment to a digital duty of care could be a transformative policy for improving our online spaces.

It wouldn't just protect children by removing them. It would force companies to make their platforms into better sites and experiences. But there's no question that the implementation of the under-16 ban has been questionable.

The vast majority of teenagers I speak to have made their way around the ban. Studies show around 80 per cent have found their way through the ban. And part of the reason it's not working is because our eSafety Commissioner hasn't had the powers or the resourcing to properly enforce the ban.

The eSafety Commissioner herself described it as trying to fence the ocean. This bill will make a difference here. It gives the eSafety Commissioner expanded powers to compel documents from digital platforms and other related stakeholders to assess whether the social media companies are actually doing as much as they can—and I have no doubt that they're not.

These companies want this ban to fail. If it fails here, it means other countries won't pursue the same policy. If it works here—and we can make it work—we set an example for the rest of the world to follow.

So I strongly support the greater empowerment of the eSafety Commissioner. I also support the doubling of penalties for noncompliance, although I don't think a $100 million fine is a huge deterrent for some of the world's wealthiest companies. I also remain concerned by the eSafety Commissioner's budget.

The commission will need to take on these technology giants in court, and it remains unclear whether it has a sufficient litigation budget to take them on. The minister has said that that is something that she's aware of and that she will guard against, and I will take her at her word on that. Without a doubt, properly resourcing and empowering the eSafety Commissioner will be essential for the success of the under-16 social media ban and essential to Australia's long-term approach to online safety.

Beyond the social media ban, the next step is a digital duty of care. Establishing a digital duty of care places an obligation on all digital platforms and services to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to users, including through AI chatbots, social media sites and other digital platforms that incorporate AI. This is an online safety framework that's proactive rather than reactive, a framework that requires platforms to be safe by design, not endlessly catching up with the latest harms.

It would mean that social media platforms would not just have to remove extreme content but would also have to reconsider how their algorithms are developed in the first place. Similarly, an AI chatbot developer, if covered by a digital duty of care, that builds a product it knows is likely to be used by children for emotional support cannot claim it bears no responsibility for the foreseeable consequences.

In practice, a digital duty of care would require digital platforms—including AI developers, I think—to take steps like conducting risk assessments before deploying new products or features, implementing age-assurance measures where their products are likely to be used by children, implementing effective mitigation measures to remedy risks identified in assessments, designing recommendation systems that do not exploit psychological vulnerabilities, having accessible and effective mechanisms for users to report harm and taking prompt action when harms are identified.

It could also require operating systems to be required to integrate an AI classifier that's set to block illegal child sex abuse material. Overall, it will shift responsibility to those who can actually prevent the harm in the first place. The government has committed to implementing this digital duty of care, and there are a few design features that are essential to make it effective.

Firstly, it's important that there is a single overarching duty. This would mean platforms have a general obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to their users, rather than a list of named specific obligations. And the difference is significant.

A list of specific duties only captures what the drafters anticipated, not new and emerging harms, and this space is moving so fast that legislators cannot keep up with an ongoing list of harms as they become apparent. Specific duties for the highest risk categories could sit underneath an overarching obligation to give industries and regulators greater clarity, but the overarching duty must not be traded away.

This is about creating a new culture where platforms think about those safety issues before they roll out new products, rather than taking a strict compliance approach. Secondly, the framework must capture the full range of harms. The government's current issues paper sets the threshold at 'serious harm', but serious harm means loss of life or severe physical injury, and that threshold risks leaving out harms that are less acute or immediate but deeply damaging and widespread.

This could include the erosion of a child's developmental capacity through unhealthy relationships with AI companions or the slow degradation of mental health in a teenager who spends years in an algorithmic environment that continues to serve up distressing content. None of these may clearly meet a serious harm threshold as currently framed, but they are still deeply problematic, and the government must lower the bar to use a threshold of harm rather than serious harm.

Thirdly, the eSafety Commissioner must be properly resourced and empowered. A well-designed duty of care on paper means nothing without a regulator capable of enforcing it. This bill is an important step towards this, but the government will have to continue to monitor the situation and empower and resource the commissioner as required as this space changes when we recognise a digital duty of care.

Fourthly, strong enforcement measures and penalties are needed. This would ensure that platforms actually meet the digital duty of care and are held to account. Again, that involves the eSafety Commissioner having resources and powers to compel the production of documents and data from platforms and audit algorithms.

This bill is a step in the right direction there, too. The eSafety Commissioner also needs resourcing to litigate any appeals, because these big tech companies are not going to go quietly. Penalties must be substantial enough to change behaviour.

Fifthly, transparency requirements are needed to ensure the government and the public understand and can monitor how digital platforms are managing the risks. This would involve regular transparency reporting to government on key metrics such as usage statistics and quantitative data on exposure of children to harmful content. This would also involve requirements for platforms to make data available publicly to increase transparency.

Sixthly, AI models—like general-purpose chatbots such as Claude and ChatGPT—need to be included. This is currently ambiguous, but these cause a range of novel harms like attachment hacking and erosion of critical thinking, and in 15 years we don't want to be in the same position with AI that we are now in with social media. We need to get the framework right so that it is actually dealing with technology as it continues to change.

I commend the government for its approach to online safety so far. We have been world leading with the under 16's ban. We need to back that up with this bill to ensure that we can enforce that and make it meaningful, partly for all the other countries who are looking to see if we can pull this off.

I urge the government to continue to be brave and consultative and to listen to the community as it develops that digital duty of care so that we can lead the world and make sure that we are creating spaces that can be used safely. I commend the bill to the House.