Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

We are running out of time, which is the most regrettable part of this entire situation. All of us in here have had a lot to say about this bill because it's so complicated. One of the issues we've got is that this bill required a deep, fulsome look. Instead we got the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 introduced into the House this time last week, Thursday of last week. It was then put through to a committee, the hearing was on Monday, the report was delivered two days ago and now here we are. It's an extraordinary sequence of events for something that is highly complicated. We just heard the previous speaker, Senator Hanson-Young, quite rightly say that we don't know what the long-term effect of this bill on various platforms is. We don't know because it keeps evolving. This time last week we were told Snapchat was out and YouTube was in, in terms of the ban. How far we've come in a week. It's extraordinary.

We all hear the stories about bullying. We hear and have a lot of concern about that. We don't want to discount those concerns by any stretch, but we are in the process, in this chamber tonight, of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. We've heard the Human Rights Commission, we've heard commentators and others from across the country tell us about the thing that we're not talking about, which is the value of social media to kids.

Commissioner Finlay from the Human Rights Commission wrote an article in the paper this week stating very clearly, and very correctly, that in fact there are lots of instances where children benefit greatly from social media, including but not limited to instances of social isolation, the tyranny of distance and sometimes even with learning difficulties and so forth. So this has not been considered enough. The fact that we're standing here now rushing, with ten minutes to go, when many of us couldn't even make proper contributions to a second reading debate is a disgrace.

Senator Canavan is absolutely right: what does this message send to the children of this country when we have spent all day talking about ourselves in this building, by the way—as we do all the time—and we've crammed this critical legislation in and made senators juggle between ministerial answers, which are being filibustered? This is not the way to conduct a democracy, and I think we're much the poorer for it.

I'm going to cut to the chase, because I think we still have other senators speaking. Let's be very clear about this. We don't know if this is going to work. We don't know if it will have any impact on the problem they're trying to solve here. If you want to see some of the most egregious abuse you'll ever see online, go online to a Call of Duty game and listen to the kids going at each other, talking about people—

An honourable senator: It's exempt.

It's exempt—quite right. So who has thought of that one, Minister? Who has taken that into account? Who ultimately is going to take responsibility when this goes the way of the Hindenburg, which it will, because it is a disaster waiting to happen?

The Prime Minister and the Minister for Communications have boasted that the passing of this bill will make Australia a world leader in online safety. They're wrong, because, if this bill passes, we won't be leading the world in online safety—we'll be leading ourselves and those naive enough to follow us down the road to further digital authoritarianism, as outlined by Senator Roberts today. My fear is that, when we finish tonight, we will have put another brick in the wall of a social-credit style system in this country. Let everybody look back on tonight as a night of shame.