MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (16:21): On 3 January 2018, Dolly Everett passed away at the age of 14. She was a young woman, a young lady, who had been bullied mercilessly. Sadly, she took her own life as a result of the bullying she encountered on social media.
That happened not long into my parliamentary term in this place. As a result of Dolly's passing, I travelled down to Sydney and held a meeting with all of the social media companies that were presently in existence, or the main ones anyway, as well as Google and Microsoft. I walked out of that meeting with the express understanding that I had just spent the last two hours or so with big tobacco in the late 2000s.
These companies gave me every reason under the sun for why they were protecting young lives—which was all rubbish, and we all know that. Based on that meeting, I worked pretty closely with the former shadow minister for communications David Coleman, and I was the chair of the Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee when, with the member for Newcastle, we held an inquiry into protecting the age of innocence.
Some of the recommendations in the report from the inquiry called for an age restriction for pornography and gambling. The member for Newcastle would remember this well. It was a well-respected inquiry.
Fast forward to November 2023, when the then shadow minister for communications David Coleman—we'd lost government by that stage—introduced a private member's bill that required the government to conduct a trial for age verification technology on pornography and social media platforms. That bill was not supported by the government. Later, in June 2024, the then opposition leader Peter Dutton pledged that a coalition government would implement a ban on social media for under-16s within 100 days of taking office.
The Labor government did not introduce a bill to protect under-16s from social media until 12 months after we introduced our private member's bill. The Prime Minister was dragged, kicking and screaming—you can shake your head; you probably weren't even here then—to introduce a bill 12 months later. The Prime Minister has made a big fanfare, and those members opposite try to rewrite history.
But the reality is that history has always been on the side of the coalition when it comes to the protection of children. We established the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. It was the coalition that consistently led the charge on the protection of children.
We actually set up the eSafety Commissioner—and what we now know, from the eSafety Commissioner herself, is that 70 per cent of children are still on social media as a result of this government's flawed legislation. So you will excuse us if the opposition say we don't trust the government to get this next tranche right. That's why we are saying that this legislation needs to follow the usual course.
It needs to go to a Senate inquiry because we don't trust that Labor have got this right. The government stuffed it up last time. Chances are it will continue to stuff it up again.
(Time expired)