Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Hansard source

I commend Senator Babet for putting this urgency motion forward. When the government announces changes like the Internet Search Engine Services Online Safety Code or the social media ban for under-16s, they often call them 'world-first changes'. Why is it that we always seem to have dubious privilege of leading the world in these changes? Why is it that it's our government who does things without thinking it through? That's because no other country on earth thinks these are good ideas. The government's noble goal of protecting children from offensive harmful content is vital. No-one here is disputing that. But the challenge and responsibility lies in balancing safety with privacy, security and some common sense.

I've previously raised concerns about the inherent flaws in age assurance and verification technologies. Whether it's the danger of uploading your driver's licence to the internet for an unspecified amount of time or using your face to prove your age, these systems are, at best, clunky and unreliable and, at worst, a goldmine for hackers. Even the government's own age assurance trial found that these tools were not guaranteed to be effective. We think of search engines as giant, airtight vaults where our information is kept secure. I'd like you to think again. Google suffered data breaches in 2018, 2014 and 2009, Microsoft Bing in 2020 and Yahoo in 2013 and 2014. This proposed code also raises technical and legal questions. How does the government plan to address VPNs? Will the checks, which are currently applied to logged-in users, apply to logged-out users? How long will age assurance information be stored for? Where will Australians need to identify themselves online next? Under this code, we've got way too many questions and few answers. (Time expired)