House debates Adjournment

Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026

Wednesday, 28 October 2026 House of Representatives

Sam Birrell

Sam Birrell Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health

7:39 pm

I'm the member for Nicholls, and the government has disenfranchised the 110,000 voters who sent me to this place to speak about these issues. Not all of them will agree with me and not all of them will agree with the government, but democracy relies on us having these discussions. That's the first point.

The second point is that I can see a number of sides of this debate. It's a question about the balance of freedom of speech, the powers of a minister and what will work in relation to something we all want to see—the protection of children from online harm. But the tone of the debate from some of the government speakers was, I would say, incredibly disappointing. It was the member for Cowper who put it best in his contribution; he was one of the members on this side who got to speak on the bill. The member for Cowper was, in a previous life, a police officer and a detective who had to investigate some of this horrific child abuse material and harm. He didn't agree that this bill was the right way to go about it. He didn't think this bill was going to work—and I agree with him. He agrees with me that there are 17 codes that this bill removes that it would have been better to build on to get the outcome that we wanted, which is the protection of children. But, as the member for Cowper observed, the tone of the debate from some of the government speakers—not all but some of them, including very senior ones—was, 'If you don't support this bill, you don't support protecting children from online harm.'

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