Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Hansard source

I certainly support the amendment put forward by the member for Lindsay in relation to the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. Today, I spoke to and listened to the Lutheran School Wagga Wagga, a primary school of children visiting on their excursion to Parliament House in Canberra. I gave to those youngsters, as I do to all school groups, two bits of advice. One of those bits of advice is to not smoke, because it's dumb, it's unhealthy and it's expensive. The other bit of advice I always give the children—these days, the primary school ones are not or should not be on social media, but I always say this to them—is, 'When you do get on social media at a later age, don't write something about someone else that you wouldn't like said about yourself,' because online bullying is every bit as bad as every other type of bullying. Face-to-face bullying, bullying by exclusion, bullying by any means—it is unacceptable in the schoolyard, in the classroom and anywhere else. The difficulty for children these days is that bullying doesn't just stop at the school gate. It doesn't just stop a little bit after three o'clock, when the school bell tolls to end the school day. It continues online. It continues via TikTok, it continues via Snapchat, it continues via Facebook, it continues via any other social media platform for children and for adults. And it's not nice.

Sometimes, when the schoolchildren visit Parliament House, we are hardly an example of good behaviour, I'm sad to say. We should reflect upon that. But this is a robust debating chamber, and there are things said across this table that are contested. Whilst I don't always agree with the members opposite, I respect their views, for them to be able to represent their electorates, their policies and their philosophies—even though I don't necessarily always agree with what is being said.

On other elements to this particular amendment which worry me, I do believe that this is the government scrambling and playing catch-up. I appreciate that the member for Lilley, the minister, has done some good work in this space and place. I appreciate, too, that there are different views on this legislation. I commend the government, of sorts, for some of the elements they've put forward—and the minister too—because our children do matter. Our children do need protection. I grew up in—well, I began reading in the late sixties, and, certainly, by the seventies, I was very much a fan of Enid Blyton.

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