Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026
Mr VENNING (Grey) (18:58): The Albanese government has delivered a social media ban that gives parents false hope and fails to keep children safe online. This is not a passing critique; this is a stark reality. Today, the coalition stands before you to expose the glaring deficiencies in their approach.
We are witnessing a monumental failure of administration that directly compromises the safety of our most vulnerable Australians. The announcement to drastically double the penalty to massive financial extremes is a desperate admission of defeat. It confirms our deepest concerns regarding this flawed framework we see today.
Labor completely botched this policy. The ban, while well intentioned, is poorly designed, dangerously rushed and badly implemented. The eSafety Commissioner was never given the necessary powers to enforce compliance against multinational technology giants.
This glaring omission highlights that Minister Anika Wells is highly unqualified to be in the world of tech billionaires and their businesses. Rather than flying around the world attempting to take credit for coalition policy, the minister should have stayed home. She needed to do the hard work required to ensure this policy was properly designed and implemented.
Today, we see an embarrassing admission that our oversight has been totally flawed, chaotic and ultimately harmful to our young children. Keir Starmer used a ban as a high-stakes distraction to try and save his crumbling leadership; Prime Minister Anthony Albanese plays the same card. He is using this to distract the Australian people from his disastrous budget of endless mistruths, broken promises and higher taxes.
It's quite funny, really; if the Prime Minister were to spend half as much time fixing the economy as he does looking for a convenient political distraction, we might actually see inflation drop. Instead, he treats online safety like a shiny object designed to trick frustrated voters. There is shockingly little evidence to suggest that teenagers have turned away from social media as a genuine consequence of this minimum-age law.
The laws are failing in real time across our country, at all levels. In March this year, the eSafety Commissioner released a compliance update that revealed the age ban is dramatically failing. A staggering number of children are remaining on social media without any barriers.
We have seen platforms added at the last moment, causing widespread confusion over the very definition of an age restricted social media platform. Reports of kids easily getting around age verification are rampant. The government proudly claims that millions of accounts belonging to young people have been removed, deactivated or restricted.
However, this is misleading on a multitude of levels. We know for a fact that a huge proportion of those supposedly removed accounts are actually just Google accounts used for basic email and everyday purposes, completely unrelated to social media. The government are padding the numbers to hide their own immense legislative failures.
The online safety of children is of critical importance to families, yet Australian parents and their children are being badly let down by a lazy government which has badly dropped the ball. They are being led by a communications minister who is seriously out of her depth and completely unable to deliver real results. Recently, the eSafety Commissioner provided criticism of Labor's exact design of the ban.
It is further evidence of another monumental policy failure by this government. During a reported lunch meeting over a lovely beef cheek ragu and delicious swordfish, Ms Julie Inman Grant revealed her genuine thoughts to a journalist. She explicitly stated that the ban was a 'blunt-force approach' which was developed too quickly.
Her damning appraisal shows once again that communications minister, Anika Wells, is not up to the essential job of protecting young Australians from predatory online environments. In comments which laid bare the incompetence of the minister, the commissioner said the ban was flimsy 'scaffolding' that simply did not provide her with any potent powers. She added that she was 'not really keen on it when it was first discussed'.
Taking on the biggest technology companies in the world is not like sticking a parking ticket on a windscreen. It is not easy. Actually, given how this government manage their projects, they would probably accidentally stick it on their own forehead and then hold a press conference to brag about it.
The commissioner noted: … a regulator is only as good as the tools … that they're given. These are certainly not the comments of a confident person who feels she has been provided with a workable implementation framework by a capable minister. These admissions completely undermine the minister and her ridiculous claim in January that early figures were showing that this law is making 'a real, meaningful difference'.
Instead, they indicate a deteriorating relationship between the independent eSafety Commissioner and the minister. The fundamental implementation of this critical policy has been chaotic from the start. The government's absolute first duty, absolutely, is to aggressively protect its citizens.
Above all, it must protect its children. The sandpit and the playground of old moved online long ago, and, online, it is highly predatory, unpoliced and getting exponentially more dangerous for young people. The bill before us exists for one reason: it exists purely to frantically patch a massive ban that Labor completely botched.
The coalition will always support giving regulators the strong teeth required to take on big tech, but let us be honest about exactly why those teeth are so desperately needed. They are needed because Labor's rushed implementation has been an absolute shambles from day one. Australian families deserve much better than a minister who arrogantly claims credit while leaving the regulator to awkwardly explain why these laws are simply not working.
We in the coalition do not just endlessly talk about online safety; we actually built the premier global model for it. Every single major protection that the Labor Party now relies upon was originally legislated by the coalition government. Back in 2015, we created the Children's eSafety Commissioner.
This was the first dedicated online safety regulator anywhere on earth. The world certainly did not lead us in this critical endeavour. We proudly led the world, and many other advanced democracies are still closely copying our incredibly successful legislative model to protect everyone.
In that year, we boldly built the very first scheme to forcefully compel platforms to take down intimate images shared without consent. We hit predators and completely non-compliant platforms with real penalties. Then we proudly passed the massive Online Safety Act.
It remains the most comprehensive online safety regime in our national history. We confidently codified the Basic Online Safety Expectations, we created a powerful adult cyberabuse take-down scheme and we drastically slashed the time platforms have to strip illegal content from their feeds. This is not just empty political rhetoric; this is a very solid historical record.
Furthermore, the proposed ban itself was born of a deep coalition belief that every childhood, and the innocence it comes with, is genuinely worth protecting. A coalition private member's bill initially forced strict age verification onto the national agenda. Labor knocked it back, then eventually bowed to immense public pressure and funded a trial in their federal budget.
The coalition then formally pledged we would quickly deliver an effective ban within exactly 100 days. Only then did the Prime Minister scramble to catch up. The subsequent legislation only managed to pass both houses with our support.
The parliament agreed on the fundamental goal, but Labor's execution has been a disaster. The numbers absolutely do not lie. We have a regulator who was sent into battle unarmed.
While the entire framework collapsed at home, Communications Minister Anika Wells was in New York. She was burning massive sums of taxpayer money just to arrogantly boast about this broken ban to the United Nations. She allowed platforms to bolt on compliance measures at the last minute.
Key definitions were left in absolute confusion. Circumvention remains rampant because of Labor's failures. The current government has completely dropped the ball, actively failing Australian parents and their children.
But simply increasing financial penalties cannot magically cure extreme administrative incompetence. The Prime Minister must stop governing by hollow press releases and taking international victory laps for completely broken promises. Everyday Australian parents and vulnerable children deserve highly competent administration, and they are certainly not getting it from this disorganised government.
We are witnessing a terrifying trifecta of continuous foot dragging, unbelievable incompetence and dangerous legislative overreach happening all at once. This government displays completely backwards priorities when protecting our future digital generations today. They persistently let down children on social media, while relentlessly chasing widely condemned misinformation laws that threaten free speech across this nation.
We also hear about phantom digital duty of care. This has involved big talk but absolutely zero delivery. More than a year ago, not a single line of legislation regarding this duty had been brought before this parliament.
We just received the vague promises of a draft, followed by a further 12-month transition period before even one obligation takes effect. After four long years in power, they are still scrambling around. The political spin from Labor never stops, but the vital protection of our children never actually arrives.
Consequently, our children remain exposed to online dangers every single day. We urgently need a different approach to solve this escalating national crisis. Much more needs to be done right now to keep children truly safe online.
What we in the coalition would do is fundamentally different. We would immediately put robust, built-in device safety tools directly into the capable hands of parents everywhere. We would aggressively hunt down predatory algorithms deliberately engineered to trap children.
These toxic algorithms fuel highly addictive doomscrolling on endless social media feeds, destroying young minds. We must act now and comprehensively block livestreaming features to prevent the absolute horrors of child abuse material from spreading. The coalition demands real action, potent regulatory powers and competent ministerial leadership.
The time for empty promises is completely over. The online playground is far too dangerous for half-baked measures and chaotic strategies. The coalition will continue fighting fiercely to ensure our children are permanently protected from these severe harms.