QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (14:06): I thank the member for Swan for her question and for her commitment to lifting up young people through the Swan Young Changemakers Conference. Today marks 72 days since I stood in this place on behalf of Australian parents and introduced an urgent online safety bill to the parliament—a four-page bill asking for two critical tools needed to help the eSafety Commissioner hold billion-dollar social media companies accountable for the harm they are causing our kids.

Today also marks 70 days since the coalition and the Greens teamed up to put politics and platforms before parents and delay the passage of this bill; 70 days for young people to keep being harmed by targeted algorithms, doomscrolling, persistent notifications and toxic popularity meters; and 70 days for big tech to sharpen their legal strategy against our world-leading law.

This is the exact kind of dawdling that emboldens social media companies to get away with harming our kids for so long. As lawmakers, we have to be as agile as the technology we are trying to protect our kids from. This law was the first of its kind in the world, and we were clear from the start that it would need to be updated through implementation.

I was surprised to hear the coalition's shadow minister for communications criticising our proposal to empower the eSafety Commissioner to examine decision-makers and executives from big tech under oath. She said it was 'draconian'. Someone should let the senator know that it was the coalition government who first gave the eSafety Commissioner that power to examine witnesses, in 2021.

Clearly, for the coalition, this is not about parents; this is about politics. That is why in a vote, just a few hours ago in the Senate, the coalition moved further to the right and voted with One Nation to try to block this bill to strengthen the social media minimum-age law. Unlike the coalition, the Albanese Labor government will leave no stone unturned to make sure the independent regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, has everything she needs to hold these companies to account, because, as Emma Mason, mother to Tilly—who died by suicide at the age of 15—told the recent Senate inquiry, 'This needs to be seen as a failure of the social media companies to take reasonable steps, not a failure of this law.' She said: Iteration of laws is not a sign of weakness; it's a mechanism for strengthening legislation.

Courts clarify, gaps are identified and parliament amends. The coalition and the Greens political party must put politics aside and must put parents before platforms and pass this urgent bill today.