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

Mr WILKIE (Clark) (18:45): To be clear, I will support the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. Although I didn't support the original bill, the Online Safety Bill, legislating the media ban, we have it, it's real, and history can't be unwound. I want to make this law as good as it can be made because I care as much about the safety of our young people as anyone else in this place does.

But I lament, though, that we are trying to put lipstick on a pig, because the social media ban was ill conceived and badly designed and has been badly implemented. If only we could rewind history, go back and think about this from the beginning, start again and listen to all of the people who ventilated their concerns about the bill when it was being designed and legislated.

There were a lot of people who voiced a lot of concerns. I note that there were some 13 members—all were from the crossbench, except for the wonderful Bridget Archer, from the then opposition—who voted against the original bill when it came before this place. We had so many concerns, and they were pretty much all ignored.

Probably one of our most significant concerns was we hadn't listened to young people to find out their perspective. The government did, quite rightly, listen to parents and other family members that had been affected, heard of their concerns and tried to respond appropriately to their concerns. That's good in isolation, but it didn't go far enough.

I don't know that the government ever actually spoke to people younger than 16 who were using social media, relying on social media, and heard their perspective about why they were on social media, what they found harmful about social media and whether they thought there was anything that could be done to make social media safer. That would have been very, very beneficial.

We were also concerned that it would just be unenforceable—that it wouldn't work. We had concerns that people could just enter incorrect birth dates when prompted by the social media platform. We've learnt, of course, of all sorts of tricks since it was implemented—such as people scrunching up their face and making it look a bit wrinkly—and how they fool the platforms and the software.

Young people are actually getting their older sibling, an older friend or a friend who looks a bit older to stand in front of the device's camera at the time they are verifying their age. Of course, it was always going to be the case that some young people would get around the ban using things such as virtual private networks. And there was the fact that there were other platforms that hadn't been legislated against yet and that they would be places that young people would go to.

I'm going to out two of my stepsons. They're both now over 16, but I know that, before their birthday recently, they were both still on social media, and there was nothing I could do to guarantee they would get off it. I hope Bertie and Ru didn't mind me confessing that—they'll probably be boastful of it!

In other words, the way it was designed was never going to work. And it's a bad law if it's a law that can't be enforced and a law that doesn't work; that's a bad law. It shouldn't have been brought into law.

Of course, there were so many other issues that were raised by us at the time. It particularly concerned me that the problem here is the behaviour or the misbehaviour of the tech companies and these platforms but that, instead of more rigorously going after them and making them clean up their act and ensure that their online environments were safer—because, heavens, they've got the technology, the know-how, to make them safer if they want; these tech companies can find out any information they want when they apply their mind to it—we were in effect punishing children by trying to take them off social media.

We're punishing them when they're not the offenders. They shouldn't be the ones who are punished and denied their social media when it's the tech companies that are the villains and the guilty parties in all this. Didn't we hear from so many experts in youth mental health before the ban and since that there are a lot of young people who rely on social media for connectivity, particularly kids in rural and remote areas for whom it is one of the few ways they can really connect with a large group of their friends?

And we're trying to deny them that. I think that's an issue. I think that's a problem.

I've got to say—excuse me for harping on about one of my favourite subjects—but we're going straight to this unachievable social media ban and ignoring the achievable ways of making the online environment safer, for example, banning gambling advertising. On one hand we're saying, 'We'll try and get kids off social media,' but, in our next breath, we'll say, 'We can have ads on streaming services, ads on websites, three ads an hour on the telly and ads for gambling in the print media,' and so on.

We're turning a blind eye to the things that can be achieved and racing to something that, frankly, is very appealing politically. I'll admit, when the government first announced the social media ban, my instinctive response was that's great and that's a really good idea. I have five teenage children—two teenage daughters and three teenage stepsons.

You can imagine how, a couple of years ago, my first response was that this is a great idea. So I could see how the government scored a lot of political points with this. At first glance, for a lot of parents and a lot of other people, it's very appealing, but, of course, when I started to do my research and started to speak to subject-matter experts and technical experts—child psychologists and others—I did a backflip, and I said as much in an opinion piece in the Guardian newspaper.

I was the first to admit that those of us who were jumping to applaud it hadn't actually done our homework and that it wasn't going to be as simple or as effective as was suggested. When I'm talking about what I think is the failure of it so far, I've got some pretty good research to draw on. In fact, these are very recent figures.

In May this year, research by Western Sydney University found that 61 per cent of under-16s who had previously been using banned platforms reported little or no change in their social media use. That's 61 per cent of under-16s who said it hadn't made much or any difference to their social media use. That's a pretty damning figure.

That same research by Western Sydney University found that only 26 per cent of people under 16 who were in the research reported that their social media use had been significantly affected. That's all the evidence you need—that, up until this point in time, it has not worked. I could refer you to a University of Newcastle study in June this year.

They found that, on a positive note, around two-thirds, or 66 per cent, of adolescents reported encountering some form of age-verification requirement. That's good. But, of course, we've already spoken about how easy it is to get around the age verification.

For some of these platforms, you just enter a different date and you're in. But that's the end of the good news from the University of Newcastle. It generally found that the early impact on access and behaviour has been limited.

It found that around 86 per cent of under-16s reported accessing at least one restricted platform in the past week. It found that most adolescents continued accessing platforms through their own accounts. That included 54 to 68 per cent of users under the age of 16.

In fact, it found little significant change in daily use or time spent on social media, particularly for that younger cohort, in particular, under-13-year-olds. Now, you know, we have this ban. It's been legislated.

I actually want it to work. I wish the government well, and I'll support this bill today because, hopefully, it will go some small way, at least—hopefully it goes a long way—to addressing that point I made about how we've got to stop punishing the kids and that we've got to start going after the tech companies who have the know-how to make things such as age verification or facial recognition more effective.

They have so far chosen not to. When you look at figures like that, heavens, you've got to be very concerned. I get it.

I know the government has got to get out there and crow about their achievement. I know that it's the job of the Prime Minister and the minister to boast about how many countries overseas are following this very closely and have expressed an interest in implementing a similar or, in the British case, an hopefully even better system. They're not going to come in here and say, 'It was ill considered and ill implemented, and we failed.' I know that politics don't allow that.

But I think the government could be a bit more honest with people and, instead of crowing so much about the success of this, say: 'Okay, these are small steps. We've learned a lot, it's not working nearly as effectively as we hoped, and we're going to bust our boiler to remedy the shortfalls in this.' The substance of this bill would be one small step of a raft of reforms to try and make this work.

Just cracking down on the tech companies in some way—increasing fines—is a fraction of what's needed to turn around these figures. It really is a fraction of what is required. If we can't turn around these figures, then I suspect we should stop giving parents a false sense of confidence that their kids are now safe.

According to these figures, their kids are not safe. I'd rather parents know their kids are not safe and for the parents to be more involved in remedying the situation than to have given parents a false sense of security so that parents can say: 'Oh, governments have solved that problem. We don't really need to be alert to what our kids are seeing online on social media.' Sometimes it's better to do nothing than to do something which fails and gives people a false sense of confidence.

I won't detain the House any longer. I will support it. I hope it actually achieves something, but I am comfortable with my opposition to the bill, along with 12 of my colleagues—11 from the crossbench and Bridget Archer, who was then the member for Bass.

I tell you what, I'll work with the government. We'll all work with the government to try and make this work, but, at some point, if they can't make it work, they should ditch it and stop giving parents that false sense of security.