Moments ago, I did share the words of a local mother from my electorate of Griffith, and I have thought about those words a great deal. Here is a parent who has done everything a parent could do—monitored her children's internet use, invested in safety tools and sought professional support—and still the negative impacts of technology have found their way into her daughters' lives. What chance does the average Australian parent have against companies developing increasingly sophisticated technology designed to keep people engaged? This mother has since taken her advocacy beyond her own family, speaking at a national and international level about the urgent need for better safeguards. I thank her for trusting me with her family's experience and for her determination to protect other children from the same harm.

Parents have a responsibility to teach their children about online safety. They're conversations that we have in my household with my children, aged 11 and 13, almost daily. As parents, we set boundaries, we discuss risks and we help young people make sound decisions. But we as parents cannot inspect algorithms, anticipate thousands of private chatbot responses or block every new dangerous feature a company introduces. The companies developing these products must take responsibility for their safety. We already expect manufacturers to meet safety standards for children's products and employers to protect their workers. Businesses must take reasonable precautions against foreseeable harm. Digital services should have clear responsibilities too.

The Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 will require online service providers to take reasonable steps to protect Australians from serious harm. Instead of relying solely on the removal of dangerous material after someone reports it, companies will need to identify risks, assess their consequences and act to reduce them. Those obligations extend beyond social media to services such as online games and AI chatbots. As technology changes, our protections must keep pace. A company should not wait until a child is harmed, a family makes a complaint or a damaging exchange is shared publicly before examining the dangers built into its product. The obligation must begin when a service is being designed and continue as its features change.

This bill builds on this Albanese Labor government's work to establish a minimum age of 16 for social media accounts. That reform recognised the growing evidence of harm associated with children's early exposure to social media. It was a major change and one that many parents had been calling for, and we are already seeing encouraging results. More than five million under-age accounts have been deactivated, removed or restricted. I know in my house, with preteens, we had talked for quite some time about when they could have social media accounts, and I had kicked that ball down the line for so long, saying, 'We'll talk about it when you get to high school.' But then, as my eldest started high school, I realised that that time had come up so quickly, and I did not feel that he or we were ready for that. These laws now have actually given my own children several more years without this presence in their lives. Indeed, 30 per cent of young Australians aged 13 to 15 reported spending more time playing sport, and 27 per cent reported better sleep. These are promising findings, but we know the system still needs improvement. Too many children under 16 continue to hold social media accounts, and our government is determined to hold platforms accountable for complying with the law.

But protecting children from online harm cannot end at the age of 16, and restricting access to social media does not address the risks children face through other digital services. A young person using an online game can encounter strangers, bullying or harmful material. A child using an AI companion, as we heard in the example I shared, can develop an emotional attachment to a program that imitates friendship or affection. A teenager can be exposed to dangerous material through recommendation systems and repeated promotion of similar content to them. Digital duty of care addresses these broader risks.

I want to address directly the suggestion that introducing this legislation is somehow an admission that our social media minimum-age laws have failed. Some have argued here in this chamber and even this evening that if the under-16 restrictions were working we wouldn't need a digital duty of care. But this argument fundamentally misunderstands what each of these reforms is designed to achieve. The social media minimum age restricts access to accounts on certain platforms for children under 16. Digital duty of care places responsibility on technology companies to make their services safer for all Australians, regardless of their age. They address different problems, and it has always been intended that they will work together alongside one another.

We should recognise what the minimum-age laws have already achieved. Millions of underage accounts have been removed, deactivated or restricted. That is important progress. But we know that some platforms have not done enough to stop children from accessing their services. The eSafety Commissioner has been investigating possible noncompliance, and the government has strengthened enforcement powers and increased the penalties that platforms face. We are holding technology companies to the responsibilities parliament has already placed on them. Even if every platform complied perfectly with the social media minimum age we would still need this bill. A 12-year-old could still encounter harmful interactions through an AI chatbot, a 14-year-old could still face grooming or bullying through an online game, and a 17-year-old could still be exposed to dangerous material promoted by a social media algorithm.

Adults face serious online harms, too, including threats, abuse and the creation of intimate images without consent. None of those risks disappear simply through restricting social media accounts for children under the age of 16. And of course young people do not suddenly become immune to online harm on their 16th birthday. That is why the government is taking this next step. The minimum-age laws address when children can access certain platforms. Digital duty of care addresses the responsibility of those platforms and other services to keep their users safe. We need both.

AI has enormous potential. It can assist students with learning, help people access information and support new developments across health care, research and education. But AI companion technology raises particular concerns. These services can simulate human conversations and relationships. They can remember personal details, respond to emotions and create the impression that a user is speaking with someone who understands them. For a young person who is experiencing loneliness, anxiety or difficulties at school, that interaction can feel deeply personal. The eSafety Commissioner's research paints a concerning picture. In a survey of children age 10 to 17, almost 80 per cent had used an AI assistant. More than half of children who had used an AI assistant or companion reported using it for personal or social reasons. And one in five children who had used these tools reported potentially inappropriate or harmful interactions. That includes harmful advice, bullying and controlling behaviour. This bill will require providers to assess the harms associated with their services and take reasonable steps to prevent them.

The bill introduces specific protections for Australians under the age of 18. Online services will have a responsibility to protect children from material and conduct that encourages eating disorders, promotes harmful attitudes towards women, or exposes them to bullying and harassment. It covers pornography, content that glorifies dangerous behaviour and material that can cause serious psychological harm. Crucially, it addresses the design features of online services. Consider the way that some platforms encourage people to keep scrolling, watching or interacting. A young person begins watching a video about healthy eating. They go from one video to another and another, and gradually their feed becomes filled with increasingly restrictive dieting advice, extreme body ideals or material promoting disordered eating. We know that these are design features that are intended to prolong engagement, and they can encourage compulsive use and interfere with sleep, study and relationships. Under this legislation, companies will have to undertake risk assessments and introduce safeguards for features that create foreseeable harm.

We know that men and women often have very different experiences online, and I'm confident that female colleagues from across this chamber could speak firsthand about the vile threats, abuse and harassment they have endured simply for participating in public life, but it's not just politicians who are exposed to this. It's women across our community. That is why I particularly welcome the provisions of this bill addressing online violence and abuse against women and girls.

We have seen disturbing developments in the use of artificial intelligence to create intimate images of people without their knowledge or consent. The images can be used to humiliate, threaten and intimidate victims. Young women and girls are particularly exposed to these forms of abuse. This bill will give the eSafety Commissioner stronger powers to restrict access to websites and applications predominantly designed or used to generate fake nude images.

Another important element of this legislation is My Feed, My Way. Most Australians who use social media will recognise the experience of opening an application and finding a feed filled with content they never asked to see. Some of it comes from friends or people that they follow, but much of it is selected by an algorithm that predicts what will keep them watching. These systems can be useful. They can help people discover new information, communities and interests, but users deserve more control over their own experience.

These reforms have been shaped by years of advocacy from parents, researchers, community organisations and people with lived experience in online harm. I particularly want to recognise the work of the Butterfly Foundation. They have welcomed the government's decision to identify content promoting disordered eating as a harm that online platforms must address. There are so many other organisations who have also welcomed this legislation, like the Alannah & Madeline Foundation and John Hartman at the Minderoo Foundation. They have said that this bill is a much needed step when it comes to protecting women and children, who experience disproportionate harms in the online world. Wayne Holdsworth from SmackTalk lost his son Mac to suicide, and he said that they wholeheartedly support the digital duty of care.

We cannot keep asking families to manage risks that technology companies have created and know how to prevent. The Albanese Labor government is taking practical action to change this. This legislation will set clearer expectations, strengthen accountability and give Australians greater control over their online experiences. It builds on our social media minimum age reforms and recognises the rapidly changing risks associated with AI. Companies that develop products for Australians must take reasonable steps to protect the people using them.

I rise to speak in support of the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026. It is really urgent that we have this in place, and I want to thank at the outset so many who have campaigned for this and done a lot of work, particularly Chanel Contos with her Fix Our Feeds campaign, to give users back that control and autonomy of choosing what you see and what you switch out of in your feed. Many organisations have championed this because it's an area that is really the hallmark of this generation: how exposed they are to this online world. Yet it's an area that has been devoid of proper protections, so I do welcome the fact that we are finally here with a digital duty of care legislation.

It is time to rebalance responsibility for online safety in Australia. For too long, the burden of navigating online harms has fallen on individuals and families. We need to prevent the harm before it happens, rather than leaving individuals and families to deal with the consequences. The list of harms is long. When it comes to mental health, eating disorders, violence, sexual assault, intimidation and discrimination against women, we know that the online world has given rise to this environment where harm is allowed to go unchecked, and it's led to major issues when it comes to suicide and eating disorders. There is another area, though, that this bill does fail to address, and that's the growing threat of AI deepfakes, which use people's images, voices and identities without their consent. We know deepfakes can spread misinformation, fuel hate and damage reputations and public trust. Yet, despite the events—despite everything that we are discussing at the moment around rising threats and violent commentary online—this bill is failing to address what I would say is a major area that should be addressed.

We know the internet has transformed how we communicate, how we learn, how we do business and how we participate in public life. It has created extraordinary opportunities for connection, innovation and democratic engagement, but we also have to acknowledge the serious harms that can arise from these technologies. Social media platforms can amplify harmful material, recommend it to vulnerable users and spread abusive content at a scale unimaginable a generation ago. That's why it is so important that that control in relation to the feeds be given back to the user.

We can't expect individuals, especially young people, to bear the full responsibility for protecting themselves from highly sophisticated systems designed to capture and keep their attention—that's the really important bit. This is not innocent technology; this is highly sophisticated technology that is creating significant harm.

We can't leave families alone to deal with the consequences or navigate the risks alone. We've had so many stories of families absolutely devastated by tragedy as a result of the pernicious and damaging influence of social media—the algorithm and the pushing of harmful content—with no real action coming in return. Busy, exhausted parents should not have to rely on settings that are difficult to find and confusing to use or be sent through opaque and impersonal reporting and complaint processes that all too often result in very little change.

Technology companies have access to the data, expertise, resources and the technical capacity to identify and mitigate foreseeable risks at a scale that individuals simply do not. That is at the heart of the requirement of this legislation, and that is why it's important. They have the tools and the capacity. They must use those to mitigate foreseeable risks.

That's why this is important reform. It establishes a clear principle: online services should take reasonable steps to protect their users from serious harms arising from the use of their services. We accept that of every other business. For every other business, even if it's a supermarket that you walk into and buy a product from, we expect there to be compliance when it comes to duty of care—that a product can't cause harm. There are consequences when the risks are ignored. We know that, too often, big tech companies wait for harm to occur and only act if they're really forced to. Even then, it is a convoluted process. I welcome this move to a model where platforms must identify risks and prevent foreseeable harm in the first place.

The people of Warringah are highly digital aware. They appreciate the opportunities presented by digital technologies and AI, but they are also concerned about the harms. Since before this bill was introduced, my office has been contacted by many people who want to see greater protections in the online space. They want to see a digital duty of care passed. They believe that it will create a safer online environment, particularly for young people and vulnerable groups.

The age limits that the government proposes to pass are simply not sufficient—I've said that from the start—to keep young people safe online. In particular, young people in Warringah have told me loud and clear that they want online safety to be prioritised. A 16-year-old in the electorate wrote to me just a few days ago to urge me to support this bill in the hope that it will build a safer online world.

The push for a digital duty of care has been building for some time. Former member for Goldstein, Independent MP Zoe Daniel, in fact helped bring the idea into parliament, introducing her own private member's bill in November 2024. It would have required major online platforms to identify and manage the risks their services pose to Australians. The bill lapsed when parliament was dissolved in 2025, but the legacy continues. I welcome the Albanese government's developing this digital duty of care with the same principle at its heart: online platforms should do more to prevent foreseeable harm. I've long argued that online safety must involve meaningful accountability for the companies that design and profit from these systems. Remember, they are the ones that benefit from algorithms that keep pushing dangerous content.

But the details matter. We need legislation that delivers real safety and accountability and greater choice for users. Of course, everyone fearing this legislation has been hiding behind smokescreens of 'freedom of speech', 'freedom to choose' or 'government intervention'. In fact, I would argue that it's the complete contrary. This is giving choice back into the hands of users. They can control their feeds, and they can no longer be preyed on by these billion-dollar-making companies who benefit and profit out of pushing content through these algorithms.

We know that as the technology evolves so must our approach to the harms it can create. We have the opportunity in this legislation to ensure that it addresses not just the risks that we already understand but also address emerging threats. One such risk is the spread of highly realistic AI generated audio, images and video depicting identifiable people without their consent. I've been trying to get the government to engage on this when it comes to truth-in-political-advertising legislation and to cover deepfakes in that, but it goes broader than just political advertising. It's actually everyone. Why should anyone in Australia have their image or likeness used in a way that is contrary to their wishes and without their consent to do something that can be very harmful? The amendment that I intend to move will address this issue.

Artificial intelligence can make someone appear to say something they never said. It can create a scene that never happened or make a fabricated event look like a genuine news report. We do not have to look far to see examples of these risks in Australia. Consider the AI generated videos released by Sportsbet featuring high profile AFL players Lachie Neale and Will Ashcroft. The videos depicted the athletes saying things they had not said and were made without their consent. The videos were reportedly intended to help Sportsbet attract new gambling customers, and the AFL instructed Sportsbet to take them down. They were able to do that because they had that power, but an individual in the community does not have that same power to ask for a deepfake to be taken down.

A deepfake video depicting Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has also recently circulated on social media. It portrays her making statements that she never made, including comments criticising another party's voters, which then led to increased threats against her because they then were outraged by the perception that these comments have been made. These are the risks we face and the dangerous environment in which we are in. These examples raise a fundamental question should someone or an organisation or an account overseas be able to use artificial intelligence to put words in another person's mouth and use their identity, image and likeness to deliver a message they never agreed to deliver? I think any right-minded Australian should say a firm no to that.

AI can also be used to create fabricated scenes that appear realistic. Earlier this month, the One Nation Victorian branch aired an AI generated video featuring a man of African appearance wielding a machete and a suicide bomber who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. This is incredibly dangerous content. The video used fabricated imagery to portray threatening scenarios, stoke hate, provoke fear and create a highly racist and dangerous environment. It demonstrates how synthetic content can influence public perceptions, particularly when viewers may not realise that the scenes are artificial. As AI tools improve, the distinction between authentic and synthetic content becomes increasingly difficult for ordinary viewers to make. This material can also be produced, copied and distributed at an extraordinary speed. The consequences can extend well beyond the original post. They can affect personal safety, professional reputations, public trust and the quality of our democratic debate. Australian law must respond to these risks in a way that is practical, proportionate and capable of adapting as the technology develops.

The European Union has introduced transparency requirements intended to make AI generated and manipulated content easier to identify. Since August this year, the EU's AI framework has required certain deepfakes to be disclosed as artificially generated or manipulated. The framework also includes requirements concerning machine readable markings of some AI generated content. These European laws recognise that people should not have to guess whether what they are seeing or hearing is genuine. The European approach also recognises that art, fiction and satire should not automatically be treated in the same way as content pretending to be authentic. Transparency requirements are not the same as a blanket ban on deepfakes. What we should do is seek to avoid people being deceived while allowing legitimate uses of AI to continue. We need to look at that, and the framework, to recognise the benefits of innovation while ensuring that people affected by fake content are not left without meaningful protection.

We need to ensure that deepfakes which depict an identifiable person without their content and are likely to cause serious harm are captured within this bill. That means content that depicts you, Madam Deputy Speaker Garland, and any other member in this House but also members of the public. We should not have the right to use someone's image, voice or likeness in AI generated content without their consent. It's not about prohibiting artificial intelligence in creative works or preventing Australians from commenting on public figures, but we cannot pass that off as being authentic content. We need to address the specific risks where AI generated content that uses a real person's likeness without consent is capable of misleading viewers into believing it is genuine and is likely to cause serious harm, not just misinformation. I commend my amendment to the House as incredibly important if we genuinely want to make this environment safe.

Social media platforms are responsible for assessing and managing risks associated with this material. This would force them to consider and take reasonable steps to reduce that risk. It would also give the eSafety Commissioner the power to order the removal of harmful online content. Platforms shouldn't wait for a victim to suffer consequences before taking reasonable steps to address a foreseeable risk. It's particularly important because deepfake content can spread so rapidly. In fact, we saw it in the aftermath of the Bondi terror attack, where we saw fake content generated online; that should be banned. Once a video or image has been widely shared, removing the original material may not be enough to undo the damage.

The bill recognises that AI generated abuse is a serious and growing problem. The proposed powers concerning fake nude material are an important example of the need to act before harm spreads, before the person is depicted, because it's so devastating. But we need to go beyond just that because the harms are much greater. I support the principle, but I ask the government to look for all AI generated fakes. Many are worried about freedom of expression, which is front of mind. Satire and political commentary are a legitimate and valuable part of democratic life, but they are not a licence and we shouldn't be creating a framework that enables us to abuse and take on the image, likeness and content of another person. I commend the bill to the House in relation to the digital duty of care, but I urge the government to go further.

Just to clarify, Member for Warringah, you are not seeking to move amendments at this stage? Thank you very much.

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.

Few bills that hit the floor in this place elicit the same level of response, not only from the Australian public but from international commentators, as the one we see before us today. That is because this bill, the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026, is a unicorn of some sort. It's a piece of legislation that simultaneously represents both an overreach and an underreach of government controls, which is quite a feat in itself.

My inbox, social media pages and office phones have been flooded with messages from my constituents concerned that the bill in its current form will pass. They're imploring me to ensure that their voices are heard. Protecting Australians online should never come at the expense of the fundamental freedoms that underpin our democracy. Nobody in this chamber wants to see children exposed to exploitation, bullying, pornography or dangerous online material. Nobody wants Australians subjected to threats, intimidation, harassment or abuse. Nobody disputes that multinational technology companies are making billions of dollars from Australian consumers and they should be held accountable.

The coalition supports strong protections to keep Australians safe online, particularly children, and holding big technology companies to account. That's why the coalition established the world's first eSafety Commissioner. That's why we enacted the Online Safety Act 2021. That is why we established mandatory industry codes and standards strengthening protections against cyberbullying and image based abuse and gave the eSafety Commissioner powers to investigate, issue removal notices and enforce compliance. There's more action required to keep children safe online, and we agree on that entirely.

I'm going to divert from my prepared comments for a moment. I spent 12 years as a police officer—three on general duties, five as a detective, four as a prosecutor. During that time I saw carnage, murders, suicides, cot deaths. You name it, I saw it. Then I left the police force and decided to become a lawyer. There was one thing that stuck with me over that 12 years: the material that I had to investigate on child abuse and child sexual assault. That was the only thing that ever, ever kept me awake at night. Because of that, I swore when I became a lawyer that, as a defence lawyer, I would never take on child abuse material or child sexual assault—and I never did, in 18 years. So it enrages me—and I don't use that word lightly—to hear contributions from members across the floor saying that if we do not support this bill then we do not support keeping our children safe. For those to stand up, from the Prime Minister down, and say, 'The coalition does not support keeping children safe if they do not support this bill,' exposes the filthy underbelly of partisan politics. We all know what this bill is about. We don't have to agree on it. To go down that road to suggest that members of parliament don't care about keeping our young people safe online is a disgrace. I hope these comments are passed on to the Prime Minister, because every person in this parliament cares about our children and would do everything to protect them.

Australia is a liberal democracy. We have a proud tradition of robust debate, political disagreement and the right to challenge those in authority. Those freedoms are not always comfortable. Sometimes people say things that offend us. Sometimes they express opinions we find objectionable. Sometimes they challenge the prevailing political or social narrative. But that is exactly why freedom of expression matters. Labor's bill is a blank cheque for political censorship. It relies on vague definitions of online harm and compliance with the proposed digital duty of care. Those definitions give the government and the eSafety Commission wide-ranging powers to determine what material and conduct may cause harm to children. While the minister's discretion to prohibit any category of online harm may have been removed, the regulator is still given an extraordinary power to determine what material or conduct may be harmful.

The bill creates new categories of regulated speech that are not linked to established legal standards. There is no developed body of law or judicial decisions to guide how those categories will apply. One example is 'material or conduct that encourages or promotes hostile attitudes towards women or gender equality'. That language raises serious interpretive questions: What is the distinction between genuinely harmful material and lawful disagreement about sex, gender equality or public policy? What happens to robust debate about social policy, education, religion, crime or cultural values? These are matters on which Australians hold deeply different views, and we have to ensure that disagreement, even strong disagreement, is not confused with unlawful or serious harmful conduct.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has identified significant areas requiring improvement, including clearer definitions of harm, tighter restrictions on rule-making powers and stronger protections for human rights. When Australia's national human rights institution identifies risks to freedom of expression and privacy, the appropriate response is to address those concerns before the legislation becomes law. We cannot have a system where the boundaries of acceptable public discussion are left uncertain. When the law is uncertain and penalties can reach $109 million, the safest option for a technology company may be to remove content rather than risk regulatory action. That creates a real danger of lawful speech being suppressed, not necessarily because the government directly orders its removal but because the regulatory framework encourages excessive censorship. The Australians who pay the price are ordinary citizens.

This brings me to the most important question surrounding the legislation. Who decides what constitutes harmful material, and who decides when something crosses the line from being offensive or controversial to being unacceptable? Credible threats of violence and serious harm should never be tolerated, but the bill replaces a targeted regulatory framework with a broader obligation, requiring platforms to identify and minimise vaguely defined terms. The duty is defined by content. Risk assessments must identify the content services are seeking to manage. Compliance is measured by how services respond to that content. Platforms are therefore given every incentive to remove material that is lawful but controversial, politically contentious or difficult to assess.

Another deeply concerning feature of this legislation is the scope for significant regulatory obligations to be shaped through delegated legislation and regulatory guidance. The bill gives the eSafety Commissioner sweeping powers to issue guidelines and directions about how online services must comply with the digital duty of care. Those powers are not subject to the same consultation and disallowance safeguards that should apply to rules affecting fundamental freedoms. Members of this House are elected to scrutinise legislation, debate its consequences and ensure that laws affecting rights and freedoms receive proper democratic oversight, yet governments increasingly introduce broad legislative frameworks and leave significant details to the regulators, leaving the guidelines and administrative decisions to the bureaucrats. That is not how important questions of individual liberty should be settled.

There's another reason why Australians should be concerned about this bill. It appears to be a Trojan Horse for the Labor's failed misinformation and disinformation laws. The Prime Minister has said, after protecting children, the next phase of digital duty of care will be to combat misinformation, disinformation and political polarisation. That reveals the direction in which this framework will travel. The government says this bill is about online safety, but the Prime Minister has already identified misinformation, disinformation and political polarisation as future targets. Australians should always be wary of any framework that begins with protecting children but then can later be expanded to regulate political disagreement, contested facts or views that this government considers harmful.

Shockingly, this bill will potentially put Australians' online safety at risk. After 12 months, it will remove the 17 mandatory codes and standards that currently govern unlawful and age-restricted material. Those codes and standards impose specific obligations to prevent, detect, report, remove and restrict access to sexual abuse material, terrorist material, extreme violence, material promoting illicit drug misuse, pornography, graphic violence and material promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. The existing framework is targeted, specific and legally enforceable. It imposes different obligations according to the type and risk of profile service. This bill would dismantle that framework and replace it with a general duty built around broad concepts of harm. That is not necessarily stronger regulation. It may be weaker regulation where specific protections are most needed. The government has claimed it is putting the 17 codes and standards into law, but those instruments are already legally enforceable under the Online Safety Act.

The government wants parliament to believe that opposing this bill means opposing online safety. That is not true. We support protecting children. We support holding technology companies accountable. We support strong action against child exploitation material, terrorist material, extreme violence, serious cyberabuse and other genuinely harmful content. But, once governments are given excessive powers over the digital public square, reclaiming those freedoms will be extraordinarily difficult. The burden is on this government to demonstrate that these powers are necessary, proportionate and accompanied by appropriate safeguards. For those reasons, I will not support this bill.

The House transcript was published up to 20:55 . The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( M s Payne ) took the chair at 12:38.