Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024

It’s good to stand to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. There are some in our community who are sceptical about this legislation. As a Liberal, I can understand why. There have been many emails in my inbox from constituents with concerns, and I really would like to address those concerns. I acknowledge those who sent emails about freedom of liberty, freedom of speech, overreach by the government and privacy or digital ID concerns, in particular. I very much respect their views on this bill, and so I want to address those first before talking about the whats, the whos and the hows of this particular bill.

Firstly, I want to share one submission to Labor’s very short 24-hour inquiry by my local priest in Surfers Paradise, who is also a member of my Moncrieff Community Cabinet, which is filled with community leaders and faith leaders. I thought it important that I read out his public submission, which he also sent to my inbox. He said: ‘I’m writing to express my profound opposition to the proposed Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. This legislation, under the guise of protecting children, represents a troubling overreach of government authority, violates the sanctity of personal privacy and undermines the freedoms that underpin a healthy and just society. My concern is rooted in a belief that government should protect liberties, not restrict them unnecessarily, and that the moral responsibility for guiding the young should lie with families and communities, not the state. As a priest, I believe it is the responsibility of families and communities, not the state, to guide children in their use of technology, and our role as a society should be to support and equip individuals to live with wisdom and freedom, not to impose authoritarian measures under the guise of safety.’

So I want to reassure the priest and many others in the community that the coalition have listened to their concerns and we have been working with the shadow minister and with the government to amend the bill in the Senate to make some very important changes. I might just highlight too, for those who sent those messages to my office’s inbox—and I do read those—that there are also, in fact, many more emails in the inbox that support this bill, and no-one supports the bill more than those parents who want to help protect their children from online harm do.

So the coalition has negotiated some changes. We’ve significantly strengthened the planned legislation in at least two areas of concern. Firstly, in relation to privacy, I want to outline that those privacy issues are really of utmost importance to us in the coalition and many of our supporters. That’s why we’ve worked to strengthen this legislation, and this bill prohibits platforms from using information collected for age-assurance purposes for any other purpose unless explicitly agreed to by the individual. Once information has been used for age assurance, it must be destroyed unless the individual agrees to it being retained. Further to that, failure to delete information constitutes a breach of the Privacy Act. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner will also provide oversight of the privacy provisions related to this bill. There will be new provisions stating that people cannot be compelled—I’ll repeat that these are new provisions we have negotiated, stating that people cannot be compelled—to provide digital ID or government issued identity documents, such as drivers licences or passports, under this legislation.

Also, following our discussions with the government, changes will be made so that the Minister for Communications will be able to make rules specifying actions that social media platforms are not required to take in order to comply with the legislation. This will enable important ministerial oversight of the process by which the eSafety Commissioner issues guidelines under the new laws. That’s very important. It’s a bit of a safety net for the eSafety Commissioner, as the minister will have oversight. These are important changes which the coalition and the shadow minister believe will strengthen this bill.

Why do we need this bill to start with? Is this a seminal moment for our country? I’d like to talk about why Australian families need this bill and why Australian children aged under 16 need this bill. As lawmakers, we really must do what we can to keep our children safe, and, as the proud grandmother of an eight-year-old, a five-year-old, an 18-month-old, a two-week-old and another one coming in March, I couldn’t sleep at night if I were to let an opportunity pass where I could do something to keep those children and everybody else’s childrensafe from online harm. We must do what we can. We come to this parliament to protect our children, and that is our task. This bill absolutely seeks to achieve that. If we, as adults, don’t do all we can to bring the online environment in line with the real world, then we’re failing to keep our future generations safe from harm.

We know there’s widespread concern and evidence about the severe mental health impact of social media on children, and we’ve seen disturbing global trends in youth mental health since the rise of social media, especially for girls. I want to outline some evidence. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, there has been more than a threefold increase in the rate of intentional self-harm and hospitalisations for girls under 14 from 2008-09 to 2022-23. There have been large increases in the rate of mental health issues amongst children and young people. As at 2022, there was an independent report on self-harm commissioned by Australia’s TGA that noted the very large increases in all intentional self-poisonings in older children, adolescents aged 10 to 19—this is very confronting—worldwide over the recent decade.

Finally, a clinical psychologist, Dr Danielle Einstein, told the Senate inquiry into the bill that any benefits of social media to mental health are far outweighed by the disadvantages. She said:
I do not see any benefits for mental health in social media. I’ve looked really hard at the evidence. Even if there were to be some, I think they are far outweighed by the disadvantages. For mental health, I do not see any benefits.
I believe, the coalition believes, my colleagues believe and the member for Forrest believes that this legislation will not only provide protections for our young but also, importantly, arm parents with the laws to give them some help to set guardrails for their children so they can say, ‘No,’ with confidence. They can say, ‘No,’ to harms, bullying, body shaming and eating disorders, inappropriate content, R-rated content, bullies and, especially, predators—those things have pushed young people to the brink, to take their own lives because of what they’ve been exposed to online. It must stop.

I will highlight who it was that led this debate. It was a man who has spent his entire adult life protecting women and children, particularly, from harm. The Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, has led the national debate on this social media age limit, and in June the coalition committed to implementing an age limit of 16. Our leader announced that a coalition government would raise the age of social media access to 16 and said it would be at the top of his priority list for his first 100 days in office. Make no mistake, he has arm-wrestled the government to this position. It comes after the coalition led the policy debate about the need for action around online safety, including our attempts to legislate an age-verification scheme last November and the introduction of the world-leading online safety act in government. Five months after the Leader of the Opposition announced support for setting an age limit for social media, the Prime Minister has now jumped on board.

The bill is designed to set an age limit of 16 to reduce the harms that social media is causing to young people. The bill provides for a new broader definition of social media companies, which is age-restricted social media platforms will now capture Snapchat as well as other major social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and X. Importantly, there will be a rule-making power for the minister to exclude specific classes of services from the definition. In plain speak, that means there’s a carve out for messaging services, online games—which many young people enjoy, including my grandchildren—and services that support the health and education of users, including YouTube, WhatsApp, Messenger Kids, ReachOut’s PeerChat and Google Classroom. So this is not the end of the use of devices; this is simply a better option than doing nothing to keep our children safe online. It requires social media companies to take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users from having an account with a social media platform.
Penalties will apply. Failures to comply with the privacy provisions could result in fines of up to $50 million—that has got to hurt—and failures to take reasonable steps to identify underage users could result in fines of up to $49.5 million. We know children will get around it, and some parents will get around it with their children. That’s the reality of laws and not complying with laws. People get around laws all the time. But it’s better than the alternative because, for the overwhelming majority of parents who want to protect their children from online harm, this bill will help them to help their children, and that’s so very important. As the party that believes in the strength of the family unit, this is a very important step for healthier families and for healthier young people suffering due to what they are being exposed to online. We must do this because it is the right thing to do, and the alternative—to do nothing—is simply not an option.