Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026
Ms CAMPBELL (Moreton) (16:58): On 10 December 2025, the Albanese Labor government launched the social media ban for children aged under 16. It captured global attention. It was lauded by world leaders as world leading, and it was celebrated by many other governments across the globe.
But I want to take a moment to highlight how Australian parents and how Australian carers, the drivers of this law, reacted. I think that the quotes, while you may have heard them before, are worth repeating. Shortly after the ban came into effect, one mother said: Our son can no longer access his apps—this has already had a profound effect.
This morning my son said, 'Mum, do you want to do something with me after school today, like putt putt or something else together?' Normally he would be consumed with his phone, watching mind-numbing videos. Another said: My daughter is six and she watches YouTube. She is already displaying signs of body issues, not wanting to eat, wanting to be beautiful.
The rabbit hole that is available through the algorithms is horrible. This is the last one: Now I feel backed by the government and relieved that our country is taking the online safety of our youth seriously. Many parents are blind to what their kids get up to online.
Those last two points are particularly impactful. They reflect a core priority of the Albanese Labor government: keeping Australians safe online and keeping Australian children safe online. That's the reason we're here today debating the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026.
Since the ban, more than five million social media accounts belonging to under-16s have been removed, restricted or deactivated. Last December's ban, however, was not ever meant to be a one and done, because when you are on the leading edge, as we have been on this important reform, you must always strive to keep getting better. That's what this bill does.
We need to keep pushing forward to protect young Australians from the constant and, quite frankly, powerful influence of social media. These days social media companies are big household names. I'm talking about platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube.
When you chat to young people, it's not long before someone mentions their favourite YouTuber or asks if you've seen a particular reel or TikTok and then shares it with you, much in the way that in the past we used to reference the morning's newspaper headlines in everyday conversation. The social media companies that we're talking about here are large, influential, big and global.
They've got resources, they've got expertise and they have the capacity to meet their obligations to uphold the social media ban for under-16s. However, in March 2026, the eSafety Commissioner, the independent regulator, publicly released a compliance update which highlighted that a significant number of Australian children under 16 still maintain social media accounts or have found ways to create new accounts by circumventing existing age-verification measures, and that's not good enough.
The pressure and reach of these platforms are far from harmless. These platforms are designed to draw people in. They're designed to hold attention.
They impact lives. When it comes to young people, that impact is not momentary. It can last a lifetime.
Algorithm driven feeds, endless scrolling, constant alerts and unhealthy popularity measures all work together to capture and keep young people's focus. Those of us in this chamber and this place are guilty of sitting up late at night, scrolling through and watching videos; there's no doubt about that. But we did not have the misfortune of growing up in an environment where that was available at the absolute developing moments, the moments when you're deeply impressionable, and this is about safeguarding our children against that.
These features are not accidental. They're deliberately engineered to maximise engagement, and this is often at the expense of time; face-to-face socialising; family life, such as playing putt putt with your mum; school work; wellbeing; and development. Scrolling on social media can consume hours of the day and can continue late into the night.
That's why the Albanese Labor government is not leaving this important work unfinished. From the first discussions, Labor has acknowledged that this fast-changing space would require us to adapt accordingly and to make sure that legislation reflected that adaptation and that change. Fighting for the safety of Australian children online is a fight that we are more than willing to have.
It's a fight that we should have and it's a fight that we are having. The eSafety Commissioner is currently investigating the compliance of five platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. This bill strengthens the investigation and enforcement framework for the eSafety Commissioner.
So what have these platforms in particular been doing? The eSafety Commissioner's compliance update shows that many of them seem to be doing the very bare minimum to comply instead of taking real, robust and strong action to protect young people. This includes practices such as allowing users under 16 to keep retrying age checks until they get through.
It could be failing to stop underage users from quickly setting up new accounts after theirs have already been shut down. And we've also seen reporting systems that are difficult to use or ineffective for parents and others trying to flag underage accounts. When you talk to parents, these algorithms, these platforms are the things that keep them up at night.
They're worried about what their children are watching. They're worried about the profound impact it may have on their lives. They've heard the stories and they don't want to be another example.
It is one of the defining challenges of modern parenting not just in this country but around the world. These are parents who need someone on their side, and this is a Labor government that is on their side. The Prime Minister made it clear that the leaders for this reform have been parents who have undergone unimaginable pain, and I was incredibly privileged to meet one of those parents in Mia Bannister recently.
She came to my daughter's early learning centre, and her role there was to educate other parents, to explain what had happened to her and to talk about the impacts that social media can have on everyone's lives. This is about backing Mia in and this is about backing every parent like her in. This bill takes aim at these platforms in two ways.
Firstly, it will increase the maximum civil penalty substantially. Currently, noncompliance with the minimum-age obligations can result in a penalty of 30,000 units, or a total of $49.5 million. This will increase to 60,000 penalty units, increasing the maximum penalty up to $99 million.
This change is designed to increase accountability and send a very clear message that platforms are expected to take the minimum-age requirements seriously and fully meet their obligations. By strengthening the consequences for noncompliance, this aims to deter weak enforcement and encourage more proactive steps to protect our young users. It also brings the penalty framework into line with recent updates to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, ensuring consistency across Australia's regulatory approach and reinforcing that these are obligations that carry real weight and real consequences.
The second part of this bill strengthens the information-gathering powers of the eSafety Commissioner, which means the compliance of platforms can be assessed when required. The amendments specifically give the eSafety Commissioner stronger powers to request information and documents from any relevant party where there are reasonable grounds to believe that they hold material related to compliance with the minimum-age framework.
Importantly, this extends to information provided by third parties, such as age verification services or app store operators, which can help verify, support or challenge the claims made by platforms about their compliance. This includes situations where it is necessary to determine whether a particular service falls within the scope of the law or is meeting those very important obligations.
For instance, information obtained by those third parties could challenge or contradict what a platform has reported about its own compliance efforts. This information could also reveal that measures claimed to be in place are not actually working as intended. This helps ensure that platforms cannot rely solely on their own representations without scrutiny, transparency and accountability.
Overall, these changes will give the eSafety Commissioner a more complete and a more accurate picture of how platforms are operating in practice day to day. With better access to evidence, the commissioner will be in a stronger position to thoroughly investigate potential breaches and, where appropriate, take enforcement action to ensure that this is a law that is properly followed.
Australia is at the forefront globally when it comes to protecting our children and our young people online. Since Labor's ban came into place in December last year, numerous countries have either passed their own legislation or put restrictions in place. There is no doubt that we have been leading the way, but what this legislation shows is that we know there is more to do.
Online safety for children is something that resonates worldwide. Malaysia has banned under-16s from accessing social media. Indonesia has applied an age gated approach with restrictions.
Brazil has implemented an under-14s ban, and France has an under-15s ban coming into force in September this year. I could go on. As the Prime Minister has said, I'm heartened by the shift in conversation and the global momentum that we've seen since introducing the social media minimum age.
But it's clear big tech is not doing enough to comply with the law. There are still too many children on social media. The Albanese government is utterly serious about enforcing compliance by the big social media platforms, and this bill is a very clear signal to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.
It tells them that we expect them not only to do the right thing but to fully comply with the law. Labor is not stopping with this bill. We are driving upcoming work to legislate a digital duty of care, and this will build on the existing reforms and reflects a stronger, more proactive approach to tackling harm in the digital environment.
When it comes to a digital duty of care and making sure our children are safe, we will not rest. We owe it to our young people and we owe it to our children.