Right here. The Albanese Labor government has circulated the most onerous, terrifying bill presented to parliament this century. The Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 exposure draft gives the government power to censor not just social media but the entire internet, using powers that exceed anything available anywhere in the world. The bill enacts a new statutory digital duty of care which would impose a proactive obligation on a broad range of online service providers to protect users from so-called harm. These include every social media platform; every communication platform, like Signal and WhatsApp; search engines including Google and Bing; app stores like Apple and Google Play; hosting services, meaning every website, every web-hosting company, in Australia, covering every website in Australia; code-hosting sites like GitHub; cloud services like Cloudflare; telcos including Telstra, Optus and Aussie Broadband; software like Oracle, Adobe, HubSpot, SAP and Monday—it's a bloody long list; AI systems like Grok, Claude and ChatGPT; any and every site that generates or edits pictures or videos; and other designated internet services—a catch-all for anything you guys forgot. And, wait for it, it includes equipment suppliers for internet hardware, including routers, servers, desktop computers, laptops and internet enabled phones. Worse, it can extend to BIOS or software updates on your computer which can be used to block websites, words or phrases at machine level. Even anonymous platforms like Tails will be caught up in this bill, which intends to give Australian citizens nowhere to hide from the eSafety commissar's quest for power.

What does a digital duty of care look like? The bill requires any person responsible for an online service to 'ensure, so far as is reasonably practical, a safe online environment'. This has three elements. All persons are protected from a variety of harms, including harassment. This has a legal meaning from general criminal law which would exclude a single critical post, although a pattern of critical posts from one person or one person participating in a campaign of critical posts from others would breach this section—one person. If the eSafety commissar or commissioner writes guidelines stating that certain political discussions or hostile online discourse creates an environment ripe for harassment, tech companies are legally forced to react and ban the user, group or topic—topic! This gives the eSafety commissar sweeping powers to defend approved government opinions, voter blocs or movements, while slapping down anyone critical of the government.

Secondly, children attract broader protections, including any material or behaviour capable of inflicting serious harm—capable of inflicting harm in the judgement of the eSafety commissar, the arbiter. There is no place for intent, let alone causing actual harm. 'Capable' is the new, low threshold. It's absurd.

Thirdly, it covers harms arising from platform design. These can flow from material or conduct. This includes infinity scrolling, which is the one thing in the bill One Nation would like to see removed from social media.

In fairness, I say the digital duty of care is not absolute. The 'reasonably practical' qualifier, which largely reflects principles from workplace safety legislation, requires weighing up all relevant matters, including the likelihood and degree of harm; what's known or ought reasonably to be known about the risk; the availability of mitigation measures and the cost of those measures; or the impact on user privacy, including whether that cost or impact would be grossly disproportionate to the risk. Exemptions—the duty does not require platforms to police or take action regarding lawful communications occurring in private solely between consenting adults. This ensures end-to-end encrypted messaging services or standard private adult emails are not forced to actively monitor private conversations for general harmful content.

The bill does include the word adult, meaning a digital ID will be necessary to prove you are an adult before allowing you to have a chat or email chain without monitoring from the government, so you have a digital ID to get away from monitoring. These things are private anyway. What does it matter what you say amongst friends? Apparently, it does to this Labor government. When the government is provided with this much power with no suitable checks and balances, abuse will occur.

Now, we get to another terrifying aspect of the Albanese government's digital duty of care. Section 205G to 205K of the bill allow the government to create fake accounts called sock puppets or liar puppets that appear to be a person yet are in fact a government run account. These clauses allow the eSafety commissar and approved researchers to assume false or fictitious online identities.