Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026
Senator DEAN SMITH (Western Australia) (18:56): I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. There should be no disagreement in this chamber that keeping Australian children safe online must be a national priority. That shared objective, however, does not absolve parliament of its responsibility to ensure the laws we pass are effective, proportionate and properly scrutinised.
That is why coalition senators insisted this bill be referred to a Senate committee to hear from parents, experts and regulators and test whether the government's proposed powers would actually make children safer. The evidence to that committee inquiry was confronting. Parents spoke of the unimaginable loss of a child following online abuse and cyberbullying.
Their courage deserves our respect, and their determination to make the online world safer for other children demands our attention. The inquiry also exposed serious flaws in the bill. The government is seeking sweeping new powers for the eSafety Commissioner to compel information and documents from virtually anyone, potentially including children and their parents.
It has gone further, introducing, at the eleventh hour, compulsory interrogation powers backed by heavy fines and imprisonment. Australian Human Rights Commissioner Dr Lorraine Finlay made the point clearly. Relying on the restraint of a regulator is not an adequate legislative safeguard.
If these powers are intended to target social media platforms and other commercial entities, the legislation should say so. It should be explicit. Protecting children online does not give government a blank cheque to expand the coercive power of the state.
That is why the coalition will move practical amendments that set out practical measures to make children safer online. First, parents should have access to effective mobile device safety tools to block harmful content, restrict apps and websites, and manage screen time. Apple, Google and Microsoft should not be able to lock out competing safety tools while privileging their own.
The principle is simple. Parents should protect their children online—not Silicon Valley or Canberra. Second, we need greater transparency around the algorithms determining what Australians see, read and hear.
Big tech should not be able to operate a black box, deciding what is recommended, promoted, buried or moderated, particularly when addictive design can keep children scrolling and amplify harmful content. The coalition amendment would expose the key factors driving these systems, while protecting source code, personal information and legitimate security interests.
Third, we need stronger action against the most serious online harms. The committee heard disturbing evidence about live streamed child sexual abuse and heard of technologies capable of detecting and blocking child abuse material. These are practical reforms built on the coalition's strong record of online safety.
The coalition has a proud record when it comes to online safety. The coalition led on online safety, establishing the eSafety Commissioner in 2015, delivering the Online Safety Act and leading the push for an under-16 social media age limit. By contrast, Labor's implementation of the social media ban has fallen well short, despite all the spin, with eSafety reporting the proportion of under-16s still using social media platforms had fallen by just 4.4 per cent.
Importantly, coalition governments have consistently stood up to tech giants, championed parental rights and protected freedom of speech. In 2015, the coalition announced the world's first esafety commissioner, the first dedicated government agency of its kind anywhere in the world. In 2017, it was the coalition that cracked down on image based abuse when it led the global charge against the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images.
Under the coalition, the world's first specialised reporting and takedown scheme was implemented to force social media platforms to swiftly remove stolen private imagery. In 2021, the coalition legislated the Online Safety Act, landmark legislation to codify the basic online safety expectations for tech companies. This created an enforceable takedown scheme to protect adults facing severe targeted online vitriol.
The laws reduce compliance windows, legally forcing companies to strip illegal content and terrorist propaganda from their feeds within strict rapid timeframes. That record matters. It shows that we can protect children without granting unnecessarily bad or broad coercive powers.
We can hold big tech to account while empowering parents, and we can support an under-16 social media age limit while recognising that it alone will not make the online world safe. Our amendments build on this trusted record of real practical achievements. It puts parents at the centre, brings greater transparency to big tech and targets the online harms that continue to put Australian children at great risk.