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

Senator O'SULLIVAN (Western Australia—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (13:28): I realise we're about to hit a hard marker in about a minute and a half, so I'll save my substantive points on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 for when we return. I take exception to the point that Senator Hanson-Young was making that the coalition is just taking from the talking points of big tech.

The reality, and the reason we are concerned about this bill, is that it's not actually fixing the issue that we all in this place, hopefully, agree needs to be fixed, and that is that it isn't protecting children. There is no more important role for this parliament than to protect the welfare and the safety of children and to put forward the best possible policies that will in fact do that.

What is being proposed here is not going to deal with those issues. The bill before us is actually fixing up the design mess of the government's bill that was first here. The very things that we said were a problem with the bill still exist now.

This bill doesn't actually deal with those issues at all. We call on the government to support our amendments—which I'll detail when we return to this debate—that will actually go to fixing the issues. As I said, nothing is more important than the welfare and the safety of children.

We need to make sure that legislation actually suits that. Debate interrupted. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Blyth ): We've now hit the hard marker of 1.30, and we will move to two-minute statements.