The Senate sent the government's bill to double the penalties under Australia's under-16 social media law to an eight-week inquiry on Thursday, holding it up until at least 25 August after the Coalition and the Greens combined to refer it. Parliament then rose for the winter recess.
The bill would lift the maximum penalty for a platform that systematically breaks the age law from $49.5 million to $99 million, a figure the government says matches the fines available under consumer law. It would also let the eSafety Commissioner compel platforms to hand over evidence of what they are doing to keep under-16s out, and for the first time reach past the platforms to the age-assurance firms and app stores they rely on.
Anthony Albanese called the delay outrageous. "What the eSafety Commissioner has said very clearly is that that will allow the platforms to go and just delete a whole lot of material," the Prime Minister said, according to AP. His communications minister, Anika Wells, said the Coalition had "sold out Australian kids" and treated parents with "utter contempt" by giving the companies "at least two more months to sharpen their legal strategy."
The law the bill amends took effect on 10 December 2025. It requires age-restricted platforms to take reasonable steps to stop Australians under 16 holding an account, and puts the obligation on the companies: there are no penalties for children or their parents. Ten services are in scope, among them Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube and X. The government says more than five million under-16 accounts have been removed, deactivated or restricted since the ban began, and eSafety is investigating five platforms over possible non-compliance.
“Social media platforms are some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world, and we're serious about holding them to account," Wells said when the changes were announced on 28 June.”
The two parties that delayed the bill did so from opposite directions. The Greens' David Shoebridge questioned the point of larger fines that have never been imposed. "Doubling penalties that they've never used doesn't seem to me to be a meaningful measure," he told AP. The opposition's communications spokesperson, Sarah Henderson, went the other way, calling the ban "a half-baked law which is poorly designed, which was rushed, which is badly implemented and which is not working," and said the amendments needed to be tougher still.
Underneath the penalty fight is the question of how a platform proves a user's age at all. The methods on offer run from facial-age estimation to uploading identity documents, and that is where the civil-liberties objection sits: verifying everyone's age to keep some people out means checking the adults too. The government's own Age Assurance Technology Trial, which tested more than 60 products, reported last year that the checks could be done accurately without holding onto people's data. Digital-rights groups dispute that reading of the same trial, and academics including RMIT's Lisa Given have argued bigger fines do little to settle whether the underlying approach works.
For now the ban stands, the maximum penalty stays at $49.5 million, and the bill to raise it waits on a committee that reports on 25 August. Parliament returns in the second week of that month.
