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) (10:30): I want to briefly respond on the amendments. The government is very keen to pass this bill today, and I can talk more about why that is. But to respond to the amendments, can I simply say that we agree with the principle that stronger penalties are a stronger deterrent.

The penalties in this bill are consistent with recently increased penalties in the Competition and Consumer Act and are amongst the highest penalties available in the Commonwealth legislation. Tying penalties to revenue of the digital platforms was considered in the independent statutory review, and I can understand why that's an attractive proposition. The setting of sufficiently high penalty amounts does deter noncompliance.

There are significant challenges we must consider in determining the global annual revenue of companies based overseas, and this can be made even more difficult and intractable when revenue is generated across multiple jurisdictions. We believe this risks platforms avoiding penalties for failing to protect Australians online rather than increasing protections to deter poor behaviours.

That is our goal today. That is why we won't be supporting these amendments. The TEMPORARY CHAIR ( Senator Blyth ): The question is that the Australian Greens amendments (1) and (4) on sheet 4091 be agreed to.