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

Senator GREEN (Queensland—Assistant Minister for Tourism, Assistant Minister for Pacific Island Affairs and Assistant Minister for Northern Australia) (18:42): My apologies in advance because we're jumping around topics a little bit. Thank you for the support for these amendments. I will have some information for you about the penalties, but I know that the penalties that we have included are a substantial increase from what was proposed.

We think that that is necessary, and we thank the Greens for their support of those amendments. What is incredibly important is that these penalties have been modelled on other types of penalties that are consistent with increased penalties in the Competition and Consumer Act. They are amongst the highest penalties available in Commonwealth legislation.

I'm conscious of the commentary from the Greens, particularly from you, about the need to go very strong and very hard on big tech companies. I do appreciate that. We wanted to ensure that those penalties were consistent with other Commonwealth legislation.

The failure to take steps to prevent under-16s from having a social media account will result in penalties of up to $109.2 million.