I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026, and I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

(1) recognises the former Coalition government's world-leading record in protecting Australians online, particularly children, including establishing the world's first eSafety Commissioner, enacting the Online Safety Act 2021 and leading the charge for laws prohibiting children under 16 from accessing social media;

(2) affirms that protecting children from serious online harm and defending freedom of speech are fundamental responsibilities of government; and

(3) declines to give the bill a second reading because it:

(a) replaces enforceable online safety codes and standards with a general duty of care, without guaranteeing equivalent safeguards against child sexual abuse, terrorist material, extreme violence, or children's exposure to pornography and material promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders;

(b) poses a grave threat to free speech, relying on vague and subjective definitions of online harm, including material promoting hostility towards women or gender equality, which risk the expression of lawful opinions and legitimate political and social debate;

(c) creates powerful incentives for digital platforms to censor lawful speech through penalties up to $109.2 million without accountability for wrongful removal of lawful content;

(d) revives the Government's rejected misinformation and disinformation agenda, raising concerns that powers could suppress political dissent and debate;

(e) gives excessive power to the Minister and eSafety Commissioner without safeguards or parliamentary scrutiny;

(f) grants extraordinary covert surveillance powers, authorising the eSafety Commissioner and researchers to use 'sock puppet' identities and AI-generated content without judicial oversight or transparency;

(g) creates broad and inconsistent exemptions, including for certain classified pornography without explaining how this is consistent with protecting children;

(h) imposes sweeping new regulatory burden on small businesses, charities and community organisations; and

(i) fails to show that dismantling existing targeted, enforceable online safety protections and replacing them with a vague and excessively powerful regime will make children safer, while putting the democratic right to freedom of speech to unacceptable risk".

The coalition strongly supports protecting Australians online, especially kids, and holding big tech to account. We always have and we always will. Tough, clear laws that protect Australians online, particularly Australian children, are critical. There is no debating that. The coalition also defends free speech. It is how a democracy debates, corrects mistakes and holds governments to account. Free speech is not an optional extra. This bill fails both these tests. It is censorship of the Australian people dressed up as online safety. It is a mess of a bill, and, if it passes, Australians will be less safe online than they are today.

No party has done more to protect Australians online than the coalition. It was the coalition that established the world's first eSafety Commissioner in 2015. It was the coalition that legislated the Online Safety Act in 2021, with protections against child cyberbullying, serious adult cyberabuse and image based abuse. It was the coalition that built the framework for mandatory industry codes and standards. There are now 17 of them in force today. They are detailed standards that require platforms to detect and remove child sexual abuse material, deal with terrorist and extreme violent content, and keep pornography and self-harm material away from children.

In 2024, it was the coalition that led the push for a minimum social media age of 16. In this parliament, we have kept working. We put forward amendments for parental digital safety tools and for algorithmic transparency from social media platforms. Labor and the Greens voted them down. Our approach has always been the same: define the harms clearly in legislation, target them with specific obligations and protect freedom of expression. Contrast that with Labor.

Labor have badly mishandled the implementation of the under-16s social media ban, as expected. It's something I warned of many, many times throughout the implementation process. Within months they had to bring another bill back into this place to bolt on additional enforcement powers. When the coalition moved amendments to protect the privacy of children and give parents access to independent safety tools on their children's devices, Labor opposed them. Labor has failed to deliver outcomes under the existing legislation. The eSafety Commissioner's own evaluation using data from March found that the share of under-16s using social media had fallen by just 4.4 percentage points, from 85.9 per cent to 81.5 per cent. Before the Albanese Labor government asks this parliament for more sweeping powers, it should take steps to effectively use the ones it has. That is common sense.

Earlier this year, the coalition warned that Labor's digital duty of care was only vaguely defined at best. We warned the government that it had not explained how it would work or how it would be enforced, and this bill proves we were right. Here is what the government does not want Australians to know. This bill strips out those 17 existing mandatory codes and standards. They stay in force for just 12 months after the bill passes and then they are repealed. These are not suggestions. They are detailed, enforceable obligations and they are working now. In their place, the government offers a general duty 'to ensure a safe online environment'. Specific rules that platforms know how to follow will be replaced by broad concepts that the regulator interprets after the event. That is a recipe for uncertainty, overremoval of legitimate speech and, very likely, years of litigation.

At the heart of this bill are dangerous, vague definitions of online harm. One category of material is material that 'encourages or promotes hostile attitudes towards women or gender equality'. What does that even mean? Does it cover a mother who argues for single-sex spaces? Does it cover a debate about Labor's gender policies? There is no clarity on how the all-powerful eSafety Commissioner will regulate this and no body of law to tell us. The eSafety Commissioner will issue guidelines on how to comply with the duty. These guidelines require no consultation, and this parliament cannot disallow them. The commissioner will also decide what counts as 'in the public interest' for the bill's exclusions. Look at who is exempt. Material produced by public officials in the course of their duties is excluded. The government's own material is exempt, but, Australians, your material is not. Platforms face penalties of around $109 million. There is no consequence at all for wrongly removing lawful Australian speech. Every incentive points one way, and that is to take it down. That is the chilling effect, and it is how lawful speech disappears without a single law being passed against it.

The bill also gives the commissioner the power to create fake sock-puppet accounts under false identities. The commissioner can open accounts and observe and record what Australians post and engage with on online services. That power applies regardless of a platform's terms of service and comes with immunity from civil action, without any warrant and without any time limit. On top of that, eSafety becomes an enforcement body under the Privacy Act and may share information with any Commonwealth entity. We know where this is heading. In New York, the Prime Minister described the next stage of the digital duty of care as combatting misinformation, disinformation and political polarisation. Australians rejected Labor's misinformation laws two years ago. This bill is a trojan horse to bring them back.

Labor wants Australians to think this bill is about big social media companies. Read the bill. The obligations in it cover every corner of the internet and more. It's social media, yes, but also messaging apps, email, search engines, internet service providers, the telcos that connect Australians to the internet in the first place, businesses that supply, install or maintain internet connected equipment and every website. This bill does not stop at big tech. There is no size threshold. Even low-risk small-business websites face onerous compliance obligations. They will be required to complete written risk assessments at least every year, keep them for six years, and hand them over to the regulator within 30 days. Unless the minister grants an exemption, a local business website faces the same legal duty as a global platform. Small businesses are already drowning in red tape and rising costs under this government. Why is the Albanese Labor government targeting ordinary small businesses across our nation instead of the big tech platforms?

Concerns about the protection of children are real, and the coalition shares them. It is why, in government and in opposition, we have taken clear steps to address online safety for children, from legislating the Online Safety Act to leading on the under-16 social media ban, but the answer is not to tear down protections that work and replace them with vague concepts and unchecked discretion, and it is not to put free speech at risk. The coalition's approach is clear and practical. We will take meaningful action to prohibit serious online harms as they emerge, but this is a matter for the parliament. Australians should not have to choose between safety and freedom. This bill delivers neither. It abolishes targeted protections. It replaces them with a vague duty and sweeping discretion. We are always willing to work with the government to protect kids against serious harm. What we don't support is a political censorship bill. Australians are entitled to safety and freedom. This parliament has a responsibility to protect both. This bill is fatally flawed. It must be scrapped, and the coalition will oppose it.