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

Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia—Manager of Australian Greens Business in the Senate) (19:10): We've known the whole way, with both the issue of the social media ban and the issue of how we need to tackle making social media platforms accountable for their addictive products and the harmful content that they spew out online, that the only way to really hold tech companies to account is by ensuring that we have access to the right information.

Big tech has consistently hidden and kept secret their toxic algorithms. Over and over again, academics, researchers and experts around the world have called on governments—just like here in Australia, elsewhere—to toughen up and get serious with big tech by saying that they have to have some basic transparency requirements in order to ensure that any rules that are put in place are actually followed properly.

I'm interested to hear from the government what it is prepared to do in this space. What are you actually prepared to do in this space? To get tough on big tech, you have to blow open the secrecy of their algorithms and the way they manipulate people's data, the way they deliberately design their products to be addictive and the way they feed on people's vulnerabilities.

Big tech makes big claims about certain types of choices, and we all know that that is rubbish. We all know that it is just not true. Their business model is based on secret toxic algorithms that manipulate and feed on people's data and their emotions.

So, if we're going to seriously put in place a duty of care, if we're going to make online safer, if we're going to allow people the freedom to turn off the algorithm or to turn down recommendations, then we have to know what's really going on under the hood. I want to know from the government: what are you prepared to do to force out what's going on under the hood of these big social media companies so that everybody can see?