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

Senator HENDERSON (Victoria) (12:43): The coalition is strongly focused on putting parents back in control of their children's online safety and forcing greater transparency from big tech, but this bill is flawed and cannot be passed in its current form. Australian families deserve more choice, control and transparency online. There must be much more urgent requirements in relation to combating online harm.

Parents should be in charge of how they protect their children online, not Silicon Valley and not Canberra. I want to say very clearly that the coalition has a strong record of leading on online safety by establishing the eSafety Commissioner in 2015, delivering the Online Safety Act and leading the push for an under-16s social media ban—a ban which in its implementation and design has gone badly awry.

Labor's record should give Australians little confidence. The social media ban, despite all the spin that we hear from the government, has seen the proportion of under-16s still using social media platforms fall by just 4.4 percentage points. I have just been listening—and the press conference is still going on—in relation to the government's digital duty of care and the exposure draft, which I understand is being released right now.

Of course, no-one has had an opportunity to even read that document, assuming it has been released. But the Prime Minister continues to mislead Australians in relation to the number of accounts shut down as a result of the social media ban. He just said it again a very short time ago: 'More than five million accounts have been disabled or shut down or closed.' That's not the case, because a very significant number of those five million accounts were, in fact, Google accounts—which include children who have a Gmail account.

So the government continues to mislead grossly in relation to its social media ban. We know it's failing; we know it hasn't worked, and it's because it was rushed, badly designed and poorly implemented, and now the government is scrambling to introduce a digital duty of care on the very day that this bill, the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill, is before the Senate.

I don't think it's any coincidence that the press conference has been timed to cut across this debate in the Senate. I have to say, overnight, we were shocked to see a government amendment to this bill brought forward. Two months ago, disgracefully, the government was urging the coalition to immediately pass this bill—without scrutiny, without any transparency, without giving key stakeholders and other Australians the opportunity to make submissions in relation to the bill.

We very, very quickly learnt, in our Senate inquiry, that the bill was flawed, because one of the elements of the bill was additional powers for the eSafety Commissioner, which would give her the power to order the production of documents from any person in relation to compliance with the social media ban—that includes end-user children and their parents. That is wrong at every level, and that received widespread condemnation by the likes of the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, the Law Council of Australia and many others in our Senate inquiry.

Even the department itself, as well as the eSafety Commissioner, recognise that there'd been a significant drafting flaw and that it was not the government's intention to extend this power to any person—only to the relevant third-party companies, such as age-assurance providers. So we will be putting forward an amendment to correct that significant drafting error—or, I would say, significant issue—with the bill.

But we were shocked to discover overnight that the government is now putting forward a further amendment to give the eSafety Commissioner draconian powers—powers to interrogate any person, not just the social media companies, in relation to this ban. There is no right against self-incrimination. There are very, very significant fines which would flow if someone did not comply, including potential imprisonment of up to 12 months.

These powers have been dropped on the Senate with no notice, no scrutiny, no transparency, and this is after the government, two months ago, urged the parliament to pass this bill without any delay. Now the government is scrambling. But, I have to say, the coalition members and senators are shocked by these draconian powers, and they will not be supported.

What we will be putting forward in this bill is an amendment which reflects our concern about the lack of algorithmic transparency. Big tech has enormous power over what Australians see, read and hear every day, yet the algorithms making those decisions remain largely hidden from view. These systems decide what gets recommended, what gets promoted, what gets buried and what gets moderated.

Australians have a right to know how that works, including a right to know what is being censored. What are the hidden harms that are being driven by these various different algorithms? That's why we will be seeking in an amendment that social media companies disclose their algorithms, as X has done in relation to its 'for you' feed, which is publicly available and can be interrogated.

Transparency is everything. It's been done by X, and I applaud X. Even the eSafety Commissioner applauded X, but we want to see that level of transparency across the board so that social media platforms' recommendation and moderation systems will be known to Australians while at the same time protecting proprietary information such as source code, personal information and other information relating to security and safety concerns, including in relation to children.

This would mean that journalists, researchers and any Australian could better scrutinise whether their platforms are pushing harmful material, manipulating users, censoring legitimate views or applying their own rules unfairly. Big tech should not be able to operate a black box which shapes what millions of Australians see every single day without proper scrutiny.

We will also be putting forward an amendment to give Australians, particularly parents, greater freedom to choose the digital safety services they want to use to protect their children. The big boys in town—Apple, Google and Microsoft—should not be able to lock out competing safety tools while giving their own products privileged access. It is alarming that these safety tools are available to large corporations and government departments through enterprise agreements, yet Australian consumers, particularly parents, are being denied access to these tools, which would allow parents to determine exactly how they control what their children see online right across the digital ecosystem, not just on social media.

Parents have got to have the right to choose the tools they trust to block harmful content, to restrict apps and websites, to manage screen time and to keep their kids safe. There are some incredible third-party apps available, including one offered by a large Australian company that's now got global reach in many parts of the world, including the US and the UK, where parents have got complete ability to control what hits their child's phone so that the harm actually never reaches their child's phone.

We think that that is very, very important. Of course, as we have made clear, the jury is very much out on the government's draft digital duty of care laws, which, we have already made very clear, raised serious free-speech concerns. It's no coincidence that the government is scrambling and has brought forward its exposure draft.

It was meant to be released at the end of the month. It's now being released today, on the very day that this bill is being debated in the Senate. We have very, very serious concerns.

We have seen alone with this bill that the minister, Ms Wells, cannot even get the basics right. In more than four years, the government has delivered only a defective social media ban and is now scrambling to bring forward this far-reaching digital duty of care. While we will consider the government's exposure draft, the proposal for new ministerial powers to make regulations governing categories of online harms without parliamentary oversight is a serious threat to free speech.

Labor's disastrous misinformation and disinformation bill demonstrated the dangers of giving government sweeping powers over what Australians can say and see online. This prime minister and this communications minister should not be trusted with another attempt to regulate Australians' freedom of expression. I was just listening to the media conference and I did hear the minister say, 'You don't expect us to recall parliament every time we want to update the digital duty of care with respect to online harms.' Yes, we do because, if we are going to regulate in relation to online harms, this is a job for the parliament.

This is not the job for the minister, for the executive and for the unelected eSafety Commissioner. We have been very strong in relation to tougher action that's required to combat serious online harms and empower Australians to take greater control over what they see online. But the digital duty of care, as we understand it, with these wide-ranging powers of the minister to make regulations without parliamentary oversight is a very significant, dangerous step in the wrong direction.

I also want to raise concerns about this focus on algorithms. Do we opt in or opt out? In fact, there are numerous algorithms or sets of rules which apply to any given social media feed.

We have serious concerns about the impact of opaque algorithms and their addictive design features, particularly on children, which can amplify harmful content while stripping users of meaningful control over what they see. But we think we must start with the basics—that is transparency—which is why we are taking action in this respect. We have seen already that many tech entrepreneurs and small businesses raise concerns about rushing to any proposal which would mandate non-profiled social media feeds without proper scrutiny and consideration.

So there is a legitimate debate to be had about whether Australians should be able to switch algorithmic profiling on or off, but Canberra should not dictate what Australians see online by replacing one compulsory system with another. That's why we believe that this needs much more scrutiny. As I say, we, the coalition, have a very proud record of standing up for Australians when it comes to protecting their online safety: the world's first eSafety Commissioner, cracking down on image based abuse, the Online Safety Act and of course leading the charge on the social media ban.

But, as we have seen, this is a ban that is not working. It was rushed. What I would say right now is that, if the government is intending to try and rush through the digital duty of care, it has a big fight on its hands because we are not going to allow that to happen.