Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has asked the Senate to pass, in this sitting week, a bill that doubles the maximum penalty for a platform that breaches the under-16 social media ban to $109.2 million and gives the eSafety Commissioner the power to compel documents from the companies. The bill passed the House of Representatives on 1 July and has been waiting on the Senate since.
The request came in an opinion piece published in The Daily Telegraph on Monday and reposted on the Prime Minister's website. "The legislation does two things. It gives the government regulator the powers it needs to collect critical evidence, and it doubles the penalty that big tech faces for breaking Australian law," Albanese wrote. He said more than five million accounts had been removed or deactivated since the ban began on 10 December, and that more than 20 countries were now taking similar action.
The bill repeals section 63G of the Online Safety Act and replaces it with wider information-gathering powers for the commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. She set out in August why she wanted them. "We do not have a fine-issuing button; rather, systemic non-compliance needs to be proven in court with solid evidence and complex legal proceedings," she said. Communications Minister Anika Wells says the regulator is investigating non-compliance by five platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.
The regulator's own measure of the ban is mixed. Its three-month follow-up report, published in July, surveyed 803 children aged 10 to 15 and their parents in March and April. It found 81.5 per cent were still using at least one restricted platform, down from 85.9 per cent before the ban. The share who held an account of their own fell from about 52 per cent to 42 per cent. More than a third said they had listed their age as 16 or older, and more than half said a platform had never asked them to confirm it.
A Senate committee reported on the bill on 27 August with a single recommendation, that it pass, after 35 submissions and a hearing in Canberra. Its chair, Labor senator Varun Ghosh, wrote that "there remain differing views about the social media minimum age framework, including its effectiveness." Independent senator Fatima Payman dissented, and her report quoted the parents' group The Heads Up Alliance describing the government's earlier figure of 4.7 million removed accounts as "a flat-out lie".
Neither the Coalition nor the Greens has agreed to wave the bill through, and the government needs one of them. Wells on Sunday accused the companies of "dirty tricks" and told both parties to move. "We have to put politics to the side and pass this bill this week, so the eSafety Commissioner can hold social media companies accountable," she said. Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young wants fines set as a share of global profits rather than a fixed sum. "Either take on big tech properly, or you'll end up putting in place a scheme that really does bugger all," she said. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the government should concentrate on the ban it already has: "The government should be focused on that because it's not working."
Meta said it had taken down more than 750,000 accounts and was complying. "We share the Australian government's goal of ensuring young people have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we are meeting our obligations under the law," the company said.
The fight over this bill is the smaller of two. The government plans to release an exposure draft of a "digital duty of care" within the sitting fortnight that would let users switch off a platform's recommendation algorithm and give the minister a role in defining online harm. Deputy Opposition Leader Jane Hume has already rejected that part. "We don't feel that the minister should have the powers to determine what is and is not online harm," she said on Monday. "When the government tries to control the internet, it inevitably fails." Health Minister Mark Butler compared the objection to protests against seatbelts in the 1970s. The Senate sits from Monday.
