Earlier today a bill, the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026, passed through this chamber, and it's a contested bill. It's a complex bill. The complexity is indicated by the fact that there were attempts to rush through last minute amendments. The bill addresses some very complex issues about freedom of speech and about what will work in relation to social media, and there are many competing views in the community on not only this bill but this issue.

Many people who represent electorates around Australia did not get the opportunity to debate this bill because the government gagged it. It's really disappointing when a government that has the numbers to get anything it wants through this House wants to stop transparency and stop debate about a contested issue. Effectively, what the government has done is say, in my case and I'm sure in the case of—I don't know whether the member for Parkes spoke on it.

No, I didn't get a chance.

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.'

That's wrong.

The member for Parkes is right; that's wrong. I'm going to quote the member for Cowper; he said it 'exposes the filthy underbelly of partisan politics'. He was very moved by this because of what he's done in his life to try and protect children. He didn't agree with this bill, and that's okay. The government's got the right to bring this bill on, but they should have had it debated because it's contested. And the people I represent, and the people the member for Parkes represents, have the right to have their representative speak on such a complex and controversial bill in this place, the people's house. It is the people's house, and if the people are disenfranchised then where are we going with democracy?

In relation to the bill itself, the difficulty that many on this side had—even though we support the intent to protect children from online harm—was that the 17 codes and standards that we felt could have been built upon to better protect children would have been a better way to go than what the government introduced. It gave the minister sweeping powers, which we didn't think was appropriate and we didn't think was going to work. If the government could bring in a bill which deals with the algorithms and criminalises the activity that we all don't want to see, I'd be the first to support it. Bring in something that does that, and I'll be the first to support it; I'll cross the floor if I have to. I don't believe this bill did that, but it's very disappointing that we couldn't come in here and debate it the way it should have been debated in this House.