Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) | Hansard source

The most important thing that we should all be thinking about and talking about in here is the affirmation that parental responsibility rests in the hands of parents, not in the federal government. I would have thought that that were a very simple statement, but apparently it's not. Apparently the government has to be our daddy now. I think it's absolutely ridiculous.

The fact that the Labor Party, along with the Liberal Party, have come together to take away parental rights and parental responsibility is, in my opinion, shameful. The fact that we are now in a position, in this country, where the government is so big, so unwieldy and so, in my opinion, authoritarian leaning that it's making decisions for parents is just wrong.

We didn't even get a chance to properly debate this bill. Look, mums and dads are the best people to raise their children as they see fit. It's their right. It's their responsibility. The government's determination to do the job of parents through this blanket ban of under-16s undermines the primacy of these parents. Like I said before, it's not the state's role to go around telling 16-year-olds and under what they can and can't do. Can you have friends on TikTok? No, the government is going to decide for you. Can you see your family photos on Instagram? The government is going to decide that for you. Can you get the news off Elon Musk's X platform? The government is going to decide that for you. It's wrong. Decisions are for parents. It's an intrusion of the state.

For that reason, obviously I'm not going to support this bill. I don't agree with it at all. Like Senator Antic mentioned before, it is another brick in the wall of an authoritarian digital tyranny that most people can't even see is being built around them right now. In my opinion, this bill has got nothing to do with kids. Like Senator Canavan said, parents don't even appear in the bill at all. It's about building that digital prison. It's about age verification for everybody in the country. We all know, whether the minister will admit it or not, that digital ID, combined with digital currency, is the foundation of a social credit type system. You are enabling right now a system in the future where the government will be able to control every single facet of your life and what you do online. We are creeping towards this totalitarian state very, very slowly, but it is happening.

At the end of the day, this bill is obviously ill-conceived. We're spending money on this. We're going to spend time on this. It is going to be a failure of a bill. If you really wanted to protect kids you would say, 'Let's put some programs together where we can help parents—teach parents, empower parents—to make better decisions for their own children. That's because, at the end the day, parental responsibility rests with parents, not with the government. Even though most of you have come together to rush this bill through, I want the record to show, I want history to show, that Senator Babet from the United Australia Party was against this bill, and I will vote against it.