I'm really pleased that this government this week has passed the Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026. I'm really pleased because, as a former teacher, I completely understand duty of care. I don't know that many people here understand that teachers, along with nurses and members of the police force, have a duty of care that's legally binding for young people in their care. But it's not just a duty of care while young people are at school or in the classroom that that teacher works in. It's a 24-hour duty of care. People this week have been very surprised when I've explained to them what that means. If you're a teacher, you're out in the community and there are students there who you know are under 18 and who are drinking alcohol in a place where you are, you can actually be held liable if you don't intercede and stop that from happening. It's something teachers learn to live with.

Part of what schools do—and I go to, say, a camp scenario—is a risk assessment before they go on a school camp. Part of that risk assessment is their duty of care. They have to look at the details of where they're going and what risks there might be to the young people on that camp and what risks there might be to teachers. This digital duty of care bill introduced by the government is this government doing its risk assessment and acting on its duty of care to help protect young people in this country from the risks of the online environments that they are using.

Rather than waiting for the harm, this bill that we've passed this week is designed to be a prospective. We can't predict all of the harms that could happen on the internet. Who could have predicted three years ago that young people could be substituting somebody's face onto nudes using an app? No-one in this chamber would have been able to predict that and legislate to prevent that harm. But in this bill, in creating the duty of care, the onus is put on those who are creating the platforms and those who are profiting from those platforms to ensure that we're covering things that we can't yet see and that we can't yet predict.

I represent one of the youngest electorates in Australia, and I hear firsthand from young people about their experiences online. Obviously, I had 27 years in classrooms, and some of that was in online environments. Kids talk to me about the opportunities that the online environment gives them to connect and to learn, but they also talk about the pressures and the risk they face. We've heard today in this place from the Minister for Education about some of the stories that we're hearing about the bullying that's happening online and the disastrous consequences of that. We've heard across this week lots of stories from members of parliament about the abuse that we are seeing on our social media. We are people of privilege. I'm a member of the federal parliament. I have resources. I have a team. I can access an app that might assist me.

I can't let go of the image of a 14-year-old boy or girl who's got that kind of abuse coming into their social media feed and the shame it's meant to induce on the victim. It's supposed to make us feel ashamed. And then we're asking that 14-year-old to push past that shame and tell an adult what's happening to them. It's designed to do the opposite. It's designed so that young people take on the burden of that shame and disconnect from their parents and from their friends and internalise the pain. We have to act, and this legislation that we've passed this week in the House is us creating prospective legislation that might cover harms that we can't even see now. I implore all of our friends in the Senate to support this legislation to safeguard our kids.

What does it mean? It puts protections for children in this legislation, makes it so digital service providers must protect children under 18 from harmful material, conduct and features, features we can't yet predict. This includes protecting young people from pornography and the obvious things we've seen—glorifying crime and dangerous stunts. What does it mean for adults? We're also recognising that adults deserve to be safe online and be given greater choice over their digital experience, and, under this legislation, all online services are required to protect adults from seriously harmful content, including material or conduct that depicts child abuse, sexual violence, terrorist material and any explicit forms and threats of harm.