Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

I'm glad for standing order 186! I rise in relation to this piece of legislation, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. Firstly, let me say what a disgrace it is that this bill, only tabled in the House of Representatives last Thursday, has been railroaded and rushed through the process here across the parliament. It was tabled in the House Thursday, sent to a Senate inquiry that sat for only three hours on Monday. Submissions from stakeholders and interested parties were open for less than 24 hours on Friday—talk about putting out the bins, taking out the rubbish! That's exactly how this whole bill has been treated by the major parties. The reason that this bill is being rushed without scrutiny and without appropriate review is both the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Dutton, and the Prime Minister are worried that if people really knew about what the consequences of this piece of legislation meant, they wouldn't support it.

Mr Dutton is desperate. Despite all the hoo-hah and the flurry we've had in here this morning about rushing pieces through and guillotining bills through this place, this is the one piece of legislation that the Liberals and the National Party want rammed through this place this week. This is the one thing, and every Australian voter and every Liberal Party and National Party voter should hear this: the one priority the Liberal Party have this week is to smash this piece of legislation through without review. Why? Because Mr Dutton doesn't want people to notice. Mr Dutton does not want people to notice, despite the huge concern, the wheels falling off on his own side, and the fact he can't keep his own people in the tent. He wants it rammed through at a minute to midnight, Christmas Eve, the last day of the parliamentary year because he doesn't want people to notice. This is the bloke who talks tough. This is the bloke who says, 'I will be tough on this and I will be tough on this and I will say what's needs to be said.' He is hiding. He is hiding on this bill and he is rushing it through and he doesn't want people to notice. What a load of gutlessness from the Leader of the Opposition.

Of course, this suits the government of the day as well because, despite expert after expert after expert, this bill will not keep children or young people safe—it won't. I understand the best endeavours and intentions of people in this place and around the country who want to make social media safer for our children and our young people. We need to make social media safer for everybody—for women, for people of colour, for those who are isolated, for older Australians who feel totally unable to engage and understand how quickly this technology has happened. We know it's senior Australians who are continually duped and tricked and targeted by scammers on social media. They need protection, too. Young and old Australians need to be able to know—have the right to know—that when they log on to Facebook or open up YouTube or participate in sharing their playlist on Spotify that the platform is safe. We wouldn't expect that the rules of safety, respect or civil discourse are out the window in the car park at Coles. We don't think that just because something happens in the car park at Coles rather than the car park at Woolworths there is a different set of rules and standards and laws to be enforced, but here we have a situation where online and in social media it's a free-for-all. We do need to do something about making these platforms safer. For far too long, the big tech companies have hoodwinked governments and bureaucrats, have set their own rules and have made massive profits off self-regulating or not regulating themselves, and it's time that that was reined in. But that's not what this bill does.

This bill is a false sense of security. It gives the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition a fig leaf to say that they understand and care about parents' concerns about children and young people online, but they're trying to fool Australian parents. They're trying to look like they're doing something while actually doing not much at all. I think this is really dangerous. I think giving Australian parents a false sense of security is actually going to make things more harmful for our young people online, more harmful for women on social media and more dangerous for our young people and teenagers, who are already dealing with so many issues in this world. This is a bill that is an example of the emperor with no clothes. Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese, as the leaders of the two major parties, who want to rush this through without scrutiny, are standing there, side by side, naked. They are emperors with no clothes, and they want people to be fooled.

We actually need a serious debate about what we need to do to make these platforms genuinely safer so that young people aren't exploited, targeted and harassed and that they're not in danger of harassment or distress. That's not what this bill does. If this government really cared about making these platforms safer, you wouldn't be rushing this. You would be putting a duty of care on these platforms to make them responsible for ensuring they have a legal requirement and responsibility to protect their customers, the users and everyday people. Instead, this bill lets the big tech companies off the hook by pretending that young people can just be banned from the internet. It's fool's gold and it's dangerous.

Tech experts, mental health experts and youth advocates are all saying that, if we do this, the result will be twofold. Firstly, young people will get around it, or they will find their way onto platforms on the dark web which are far more insidious, much more dangerous and much harder for parents and, frankly, legal enforcement to keep an eye on what is going on. Secondly, for those that have been able to circumvent the rules and get themselves online, the tech companies have no obligation and no requirement to make sure that, if you get through the cracks, if you get online as a young person, you'll be kept safe. They'll be pushed into the darkest parts of the web and they won't want to tell their parents what's going on because they'll be worried their phone will be taken away, so they will spiral further and further into isolation from their friends, their family, medical experts who may be able to help them, school counsellors and teachers. They'll become even more isolated and vulnerable. Or, if they're smart enough, like most kids around the age of 14 or 15, they'll work out a way to crack the code to get onto Instagram or TikTok to set themselves up on a social media platform with the false premise that it's only for adults—so they're going to be swimming around on a platform that has no obligation to keep, or concern for keeping, children and young people safe.

This is a disaster unfolding before our eyes. You couldn't make this stuff up. The Prime Minister says he's worried about social media. The Leader of the Opposition says, 'Let's ban it.' It's a race to the bottom to try and pretend who can be the toughest, and all they end up doing is pushing young people into further isolation and giving the platforms the opportunity to continue the free-for-all because there's no social responsibility required.

There have been some promises made around regulating the platforms to make them safer and more responsible, and to stop them from profiteering off harmful content—but none of that is in this bill. The social media ban is the emperor with no clothes. It is fool's gold. It's pretend. It's like going to The Reject Shop, purchasing the dodgy floaties, putting them on your kids and saying, 'There you go, kids; jump in the deep end and see how you float.' No parent would responsibly do that, and the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition shouldn't make them do it.

This bill is rubbish. I'm angry about it because it doesn't meet the very serious needs of the very real concerns parents have. It's pretend. The Prime Minister and Peter Dutton are pretending to deal with a very, very serious issue. There's a reason they didn't want this to go through a proper Senate inquiry. There is a reason they don't want people talking about it. There's a reason this is being done at the last minute in this parliamentary session, and it's that they know it's a bad piece of legislation and that it won't do what they say it will do, but they don't want people to know about it. Trying to fool the Australian population into thinking they are doing this in the interests of children is abhorrent. They're not; they're doing it in their own political interests. This is a political fix, not a social media fix. The ban is rubbish.

I move the Greens' second reading amendment:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate notes that:

(a) the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society heard from experts that banning young people from social media will not make platforms safer for anyone, and instead recommended tougher action on platforms, including a legislated duty of care; and

(b) the attempt by Labor and the Liberals to ram this ban through without genuine scrutiny in under a week is rushed, reckless and ignores expert evidence".