I rise to make a contribution on the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026. The online services we use and increasingly depend on have reshaped so many aspects of our everyday lives—how we stay connected with one another, how we stay informed, how we work, how we learn and how we interact with services. Given the significant role these services play in our everyday lives, it is only appropriate that we establish a set of basic safety standards to protect Australians as they go about their lives online. This should not be controversial. We impose basic safety standards across so many aspects of everyday life, and we have a responsibility to ensure that our online services meet those same fundamental standards of safety. We are committed to ensuring that online services meet appropriate safety standards and that technology companies fulfil their responsibilities to keep Australians, particularly our children, safe online. We are taking world-leading action, with our approach and learnings being closely watched by countries right around the world. This bill forms part of that action to keep Australians safe.

At the heart of this bill is the establishment of a digital duty of care. This will ensure that Australians are protected from serious, harmful and illegal content while under-18s are protected from content and features that are harmful to young people. Another key element of the digital duty of care is giving adults greater choice and agency over the content they see and the features they use online. For the first time, the digital duty of care will establish minimum standards for the features used by digital service companies. These standards will require digital service companies to undertake annual risk assessments of the potential harms associated with features on their services, put systems in place to prevent those features from causing harm to Australian users and, in the case of social media platforms, provide user empowerment tools that give people a 16 and over greater choice and agency over what they see in their feeds, and, if platforms and online service providers fail to comply with the digital duty of care, they can expect the fine of $109.2 million. This will bring penalties for this sector in line with the penalties that apply in other sectors on which Australian consumers depend.

One of the key objectives of the digital duty of care is to protect Australian children from content and features that are harmful to young Australians. We are placing a positive responsibility on platforms and online service providers to protect children and act in their best interests online. The digital duty of care will protect Australian children across online services, particularly those popular with young people, such as online games and AI chat bots. It will address harmful material including abuse, harassment, bullying, pornography, content that promotes eating disorders, content that promotes hostile attitudes towards women and gender equality, and other material that causes harm to children.

Another form of harmful content this digital duty of care will seek to tackle is content that glorifies crime or encourages dangerous stunts. Regrettably, we have seen young men in particular engage in criminal activities after being exposed to content that glorifies a life of crime. Having spoken to parents, local community organisations and schools, I have seen the very serious and lifelong consequences for those who have fallen into that life. Those consequences are not limited to the individuals themselves. They affect their families and they affect the wider community, and, of course, there is the impact on their victims, who are often other young people. It is critical that we dismantle the ability of criminal organisations to use online platforms to recruit vulnerable young people into a life of crime. As a member of the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, I've seen evidence of the consequences of predatory behaviour online and the harm it does to children.

The digital duty of care will also take action to protect Australian children from design features on digital platforms that can have negative behavioural impacts, including addictive features that encourage children to stay up late and lose sleep. As a father to a young child, I share the concerns of many parents about screen time and its impact on our children, particularly the younger ones. We all know how important it is for young children to spend time away from screens and maintain healthy habits, so I am pleased to see action being taken through this bill.

The reforms in digital duty of care bill before the house today build on the other actions the Albanese Labor government has taken to protect Australian children online, including the minimum-age requirements for social media accounts. The Albanese Labor government introduced and passed legislation establishing a minimum age of 16 for social media accounts, with the laws coming into effect in December last year. It's been less than a year since those laws came into effect, and they're already having a significant impact, with more than five million underage accounts deactivated, removed or restricted.

There is still more work to do in this space. Despite millions of accounts being deactivated, we know there are still far too many under-16s on social media. That is why the eSafety Commissioner is investigating platforms that have failed to comply, including Meta, TikTok and Snapchat. Even so, there is a strong start, and we are seeing positive signs for young Australians. Exposure to inappropriate and violent content is down by 18 per cent, online bullying is down by nine per cent, 20 per cent of Australian children are reporting better sleep, and 30 per cent of young Australians aged 13 to 15 are spending more time playing sport. It's no wonder that other countries have looked to follow Australia's lead, with the United Kingdom, Canada, Indonesia and the European Union all considering or adopting similar policies.

The digital duty of care is not just intended to protect Australian children, it is intended to protect all Australians, including Australian adults. I belong to a generation that grew up as the internet was becoming part of our lives, long before it became the dominant force it is today. The internet and the digital services that now shape our everyday lives are a far cry from what they were when I was younger. The internet has become more advanced and more deeply integrated into our lives. That has brought many benefits, but it also brought new risks and harms.

The bill before the House will work to address the harms Australians are at risk of being exposed to online. It will require online services to protect Australians from a range of harmful content, including sexual violence, child abuse, animal abuse, content that incites or promotes extreme violence, content that promotes physical violence, death threats, rape threats, gender based violence, self-harm, material supporting a terrorist organisation and other harms. The bill will also provide additional powers for the eSafety Commissioner to take down platforms that create non-consensual deepfake images. It is critical that we protect all Australians from exposure to harmful content online.

This is not neutral technology. Algorithms are designed to feed us more in a way which has amplified harmful content. As the Prime Minister said today, big tech are failing to meet their social responsibilities. The companies have been undermining their social licence, and their time is up. Their social licence will be expressed by this legislation. We have seen the devastating impact the online world can have on young people, including driving them towards self-harm. We have seen bullying take on new and more damaging forms. We have seen how people can approach, manipulate and exploit children without ever meeting them in person. And we have seen how children can be manipulated into causing harm to others and, tragically, to themselves. Parents suffer, families suffer and children suffer. On platforms where people can manipulate children anonymously, the harm inflicted on a child can be broadcast to their community and to the world.

Social media is a unique service and market. In most other markets we have a choice about what we want to consume. If we are on a streaming platform, we choose what movie we watch. If we are watching television, we choose the channel. If we are listening to music, we choose the song. But social media platforms are different. That is because algorithmic recommender systems feed us content from people and pages we have not chosen to follow. Social media companies make a lot of money from our information and our attention. Therefore, users should have a say in how their experiences are shaped on these platforms. Our feeds can be crowded, with content being recommended to us rather than the people we actually want to see and follow. But this bill is not about removing the algorithm. It is about choice.

Having worked in the tech space for most of my professional life, I've seen how much the digital landscape has changed. Our cyberthreats have evolved, but so too has the way we interact with online platforms. We all remember when our social media feeds were largely made up of posts from our friends, family and the people we chose to follow. Today it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between the content we have chosen to see and the content platforms choose for us. For us as users, it is not always clear how much control or agency we have over the experiences that these platforms create for us. These experiences are shaped not simply by neutral technological choices but by business models in which engagement and attention generate revenue. That is why giving Australians greater choice over what they see online is so important.

The bill before the House will introduce My Feed, My Way. Under the digital duty of care and My Feed, My Way, social media platforms will have to give Australians a choice over the primary feed they see when they first open the app. It will allow Australians to opt in or opt out of algorithmic recommendations as they wish. It is about choice, not restrictions. If you want to continue using algorithmic recommendations, you can opt in. If you no longer want to use them, you can opt out.

Those who oppose these reforms have characterised them as an attempt to control what Australians can and cannot see on social media. It's simply not the case. It is about giving Australians greater agency over what they see and do on their social media accounts and bringing this industry into line with so many other markets where Australian consumers have a choice. So it is interesting that those opposite, who so often advocate for individualist approaches, suddenly seem opposed to the principle of individual choice. When it comes to social media, why shouldn't Australians have the same agency over their own experience that we expect in so many other parts of our lives? It's not telling people what they can and cannot see. It is about giving people the freedom to decide for themselves.

The bill before the House will bring about an important set of reforms to protect all Australians online and build on our world-leading action to protect Australian children through the under-16 social media minimum age requirements. We are holding big tech companies to account while making sure that Australian consumers have the same opportunities for choice and protection that they would normally expect in other parts of our economy. I am proud to be part of an Albanese Labor government that is taking action to address the serious challenges in this space.

Australia's digital duty of care is about giving adults more choice over their feeds and protecting kids online. We're acting and we're making sure big tech and the tech companies take more responsibility for the online environments they create. I commend the bill to the House.