Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Internet Search Engine Services Online Safety Code, as we've heard today, is set to come into effect in December this year, and what it is going to effectively do is require internet search engine providers to confirm the age of their account holders, amongst a range of other things that we've heard about this evening. But the crux of this is that what this will mean is that every Australian will be locked out of their Google account, their Yahoo account or their Microsoft account until they verify their age, which I think is quite incredible. I think it's unbelievable, actually. How does a big tech company actually achieve this in a practical sense? How does a big tech company actually identify you and confirm your age? Well, it does that by simply confirming your identity, and it means this is not just targeted at children; it's going to be targeted at everyone. You can't identify who is 16 and over unless you identify everybody.

That's what this is about. Let's be very clear about it. That's what this has always been about. It was the same with the original legislation banning social media for under-16s, which was a trojan horse for this very position. This was rushed through in parliament last year. Now we're seeing an industry code which, as many of the contributors tonight have said, has been brought out without industry consultation and with a bureaucratic stroke of a pen. The selling point has always been about protecting kids online, which nobody in this room disagrees with; it's trite to suggest otherwise. Yet the measures that are used to achieve this always seem to come back to the issue of requiring more government intervention and more government surveillance of Australians.

Why is it happening? What is the real story here? Well, the corporate sector and the administrative state have lost control of the narrative. They've lost control of the media cycle, and they're driven by the fear that the internet and social media platforms are now empowering populist and alternative views which they regard simply as unhelpful. It just sounds like free speech to me. The consequences of this new code will be yet further erosion of our privacy and another step towards this digital dystopia that we've been talking about.

For us, as a country that purports to identify itself as free and as a country that believes, I think, at its core that unnecessary surveillance is unacceptable, this is extraordinary. We're not communist China. But, if you want to know what Australia's future looks like on its current trajectory, go and have a look at Shenzhen in China—cameras everywhere, facial recognition, a digital currency and a social credit system. That is not an Australia that I want. It's not an Australia that I think anyone really wants. But it's an Australia that the bureaucracy and the political class are slow-marching us towards. It's that serious. This is not just about protecting kids online. Once this system is in place—once the digital snare trap is in place—it is going to be impossible to wind back.