Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Emergency Management) | Hansard source

I should indicate that the government has been grateful for the willingness of the opposition to constructively engage in some of the ways that we might improve this bill. We have similarly been grateful to those senators who participated in the Senate inquiry. Many of them are here in the chamber this evening. We're also grateful for the many Australians who have spoken out about this issue, either in the context of the Senate's inquiries or in the broader public debate.

Senator Henderson, you spoke about some of the harms that you've observed in your interactions with families and with parents. I think, for many of us, this is a common experience in our interactions with parents, and also with teachers, because parents are deeply distressed about some of the material that their children are exposed to online. They are uncertain about how to navigate the peer pressure that children experience, from their friends and peers at school and at sport, to be in these social media environments. They are looking for support from government to help them navigate these questions.

These were not questions that were relevant questions when I was growing up—I think it's safe to portray my age here. There were other difficult questions for me to navigate as a young person. Parents, I think, are finding it very difficult. In my home state of New South Wales the ban on mobile phones in schools has made a significant difference to the behaviour of children in schools and the way that children interact socially at school. It is clear that while technology has brought really significant benefits, it's also brought non-trivial harms for children.

We are confident that there are technological solutions available to us. You cited the example of TikTok; it's been much canvassed. That platform was able to identify, by its own public statements, a very large number of underage users on its platform and remove them. That did not require access to government documentation. It was based on information already available to that platform.

The amendment that we are presently considering is actually based on that foundational understanding of the state of the technology. It may be that, in some instances, social media platforms choose to offer an option to users to provide government documentation, but what this amendment ensures is that that will not be able to be the only means, the only choice, offered to a potential user. What this amendment seeks to do is, in fact, to ensure that, on every occasion when a person is asked to engage in an age-assurance process, they have a choice, and it enlivens the obligations on technology companies to utilise the technology capabilities that they already possess to undertake this work and to make sure these platforms are safe and that people are using them in an appropriate way.