BILLS – Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 – IN COMMITTEE

I think from the debate it’s very clear that we are not sure yet whether this hasty, blunt attempt will do anything to reduce the social harms of social media to children, but what we do know for sure is that we have successfully disillusioned a whole generation of Australians with Australian politics. A whole generation of Australians have watched this sordid saga play out over the past week and have been completely disillusioned with their democratic process, which they should have an involvement in. We have completely denied them their voice. Maybe we’ve scheduled the debate for 10.30 pm on the last day of ‘school’ because we know that all the people who will be impacted by this ban will be in bed. It’s past their bedtime. They can’t even watch it. They haven’t been able to have a process through the Senate inquiry. We had 15,000 submissions in 24 hours, and we had an inquiry of three hours the day after. Nobody, of course, could read anything but a fraction of those submissions. Less than one per cent of them were published on the website before the report. This is an absolute outrage and a stitch-up of grand proportions. I don’t think it’s going to work. I don’t have time tonight, because I want to let other senators speak. I don’t think it is going to work. I know that the stitch-up is in. I am going to try to make the bill better. I am going to try to fix
the issue that Senator Roberts logically pointed out: why are we letting Digital ID be a means of identification at all? It’s not used at the moment at all, really. It’s not in widespread use, so why don’t we just rule that out right now? If it’s something that comes into use in years to come, we can always change the law. There’s a review built into this law in two years time. We can do it then. If we are serious about responding to the concerns about Digital ID, let’s just get rid of it. My amendment would do that. Also, why is it that this bill seeks to—we think, the minister says—help parents, but the word ‘parent’ is not mentioned at all? There is not a single mention of the word ‘parent’ in this bill. Why? Why aren’t we helping parents, rather than trying to replace them? That’s what this bill tries to do; it tries to set up a nanny state. We here in Canberra think that we can pass this law and all look at how great we are and pat ourselves on the back for how we’ve saved the world. But the bill won’t do that; it won’t help at all. Parents use their own agency, their interaction with their children to use social media responsibly. So I have an amendment which will allow some children to continue to use social media with parental approval. It’s based on the law in Florida that’s just went through. Our inquiry barely looked at that law. It went through after an actual process. It got vetoed by the governor in the first instance. It went back to congress in Florida, and they’ve approved it. That’s the way democracy should work. But we have completely ridden roughshod over that with this hasty, truncated process this week. I have another amendment that would narrow the definition. There is a ridiculous definition in this bill which basically captures any app that enables interaction between two or more people, which is basically everything you do on the internet. It’s going to cover apps like Strava for bike riding. It’s going to cover apps like Deputy which are used by people who work. Fourteen-year-olds can get a job, but apparently they can’t have social media. I know the minister’s going to say we’ll exempt them, but why create this uncertainty when, again, the Florida law has a much more targeted definition which focuses the law on apps which cause social harm. That’s what we should be focusing on. I don’t have the time to go through the other amendments in detail. I want to let other senators have their turn. But I come back to the point that a whole generation has been activated by this process. There is a silver lining, perhaps. Right now a guy called Mr Anthony Khallouf is running a livestream of our broadcast here. He has 38,000 people watching. The official YouTube channel of parliament has 800. He’s got 38,000 young people absolutely pissed off with this parliament right now watching. They are totally angry, and those people are going to grow up and they’re going to keep voting. And I think there will be a lot of change coming to our parliament in years to come if we keep ignoring those people, like we are tonight.